Let go of guilt.
It’s by Love’s hand we’re built,
born with grace and given surety,
formed in a thoughtful image,
finished to the hilt.
Asked of us is only the willingness to see
that God loves us,
and that one Truth sets us free.
So wake up and smile.
Get up off your knees.
You’ll find, in the end,
the sin was the illusion,
the lock was never locked,
and every moment holds
a fresh door in,
the way out and the way back
the very same swinging hinge.
Saying what we mean
and meaning what we say,
giving all we have
and watching it come rounding back our way,
handed on to whomever we please.
We can have it all
and carry no fear.
The walls we called our limits
were only fog. Watch them clear.
And the voice that says you are not enough,
the one that wakes before you do
and starts its quiet subtraction,
the one that learned its lines so long ago
you mistook them for your own,
that voice is not God,
and it is not you.
It is the old bruise speaking.
Thank it for trying to keep you small and safe.
Then set it down,
the way you’d set down a stone
you forgot you’d been carrying,
and feel how far you rise without it.
Our pleasure grows as we forgive,
from within as from above,
so let’s not war, one with another.
There is no living in that.
Remember, friend, you were made from love,
and made from love, you cannot owe your way back in.
You were never on trial.
The verdict came in before you were born,
and the verdict was yes.
You don’t earn the morning.
You wake, and it is already given.
So wake. It is already yours.
It always, only, was.
Rob Chavez 1998
© 1998 Rob Chavez. All Rights Reserved.