O Vulnerable One, We Wait With You - A Holy Week Poem

This Holy Week is a profound time of following the vulnerable footsteps of the One who knows and waits with us.

The path to new life is a path of descent - of surrender, letting go, and waiting.

O Vulnerable One, We Wait with You -  by Christa Hesselink

O Vulnerable One, in the face of  your ANXIETY, you loved.

And we are anxious now.

Help us in our ANXIETY to show love.

O Vulnerable One, in the face of your ALONENESS you loved.

And we are alone now.

Help us in our ALONENESS to show love.

O Vulnerable One, in the face of being BETRAYED you loved.

And we feel betrayed by life now.

Help us in our BETRAYAL to show love.

O Vulnerable One, in the face of your FEAR you loved.

And we are full of fear now.

Help us in our FEAR to show love.

O Vulnerable One, in the face of your ANGER you loved.

And we feel anger for our new reality

Help us in our ANGER to show love.

O Vulnerable One, in the face of being STRIPPED DOWN AND SHAMED you loved.

And we are being stripped down and ashamed by parts of our own lives

Help us in our SHAME to show love.

O Vulnerable One, in the face of  WAITING FOR WHAT WAS TO COME you loved.

And we are waiting and waiting and waiting for what is to come

Help us in our WAITING to show love.

O Vulnerable One, in the face of WHEN YOU FELL you loved.

And we find ourselves falling out of our “old lives” of control and easy freedom.

Help us IN OUR FALLING to show love.

O Vulnerable One, in the face of being TORTURED you loved.

And we brush against our own tortured lives these days.

Help us in our TORTURE to show love.

O Vulnerable One, in the face of your DOUBT you loved.

And we feel DOUBT & FAITHLESS now.

Help us in our DOUBTING to show love.

O Vulnerable One, in the face your SADNESS AND SAYING GOODBYE you loved.

And we feel sad for all the goodbyes we are living right now.

Help us in our SADNESS to show love.

O Vulnerable One, in the face of feeling FORSAKEN you loved.

And we feel forsaken now.

Help us in our FORSAKEN places to show love.

GOD, help us, for we do not know what we are doing.

Forgive us, for we do not know what we are doing.

And here, it is so dark.  In your own darkness and in ours:  in the anxiety, aloneness, betrayal, fear, anger, shame, waiting, torture, falling, doubt, sadness and forsakenness –

We wait with you to sing a new song.  We hope with you for a new song to form and rise in us and all around.

But today, we are vulnerable, together, with you in this darkness.

And, we wait.