Curse

After Galatians 3:7-14 

The curse dragged me

across a barren land,

a landscape like desert,

alone, cast out,

abandoned. To walk,

or perhaps crawl,

that landscape is

to hunger, to thirst,

to ache, to hurt,

to despair, to die.

It’s a journey we

cannot make ourselves;

only our substitute 

can take that walk,

can make that journey,

taking our place.

 

Photograph by Daniel Jensen via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The promise

After Genesis 3:1-19

To be promised a bruise,

a bruise on another’s heel,

is odd, I know, and unusual,

I know, for somehow a bruise

on another’s heel becomes

the sign of the way out,

our way out,

the light at the end of the tunnel,

our light at the end,

and it’s where the bruise happens,

on that heel.

Photograph by Fabrizio Verrecchia via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The fig tree

After Mark 11:1-14

Hungry, he spies a tree,

a fig tree in full leaf,

suggestive of branches

hanging heavy with fruit.

He searches, but the tree

offers nothing, yields nothing

but leaves, an appearance only,

an invitation without substance,

a mirage, a fraud

and so the curse.

From the cursed fig

to the temple, with its appearance

of wealth and wisdom and worship

but nothing but appearance, a fraud,

a mirage,

and so it joins its brother,

the fig tree.

Photograph by Lynn Greyling via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.