General (Vol. 2)
War and Peace
Part i.
- Your power poured out in boundless love
Beyond the wit of man,
Eternal presence in our world
And Before it began:
Exert a focus in the Grace
The Spirit now imparts
To form a knot of power and love
Within our worried hearts. - We may be led through rash response
To damage and to kill,
Too keen on provocation
To renounce an act of will:
We may forget Your living pain
Turning the other cheek,
Thinking it only hastens war
By making us seem weak. - Let us remember in this hour
The depth of sacrifice
Paid by men other than ourselves,
Corpses of our advice:
May we be sure the price we ask
Is worthy of the prize,
Knowing we would be glad to pay
The price that we advise. - Let us recall the misery
Arising from excess,
Not thinking war and strategy
Are variants of chess:
But if we see Your will in war,
Though such time must be rare,
Whether we win or lose the fight
We know You will be there.
Part ii.
- Power of love and power of will
Are the gifts that haunt us still:
Gifts that trap and gifts that tower,
That swamp forever in the hour.
Gifts that of themselves combine
Human traits and the divine
Making us both blessed and cursed
In what cannot be reversed. - Had our fate at Adam's hand
In his quest to understand
Been confined to innocence
Or benign indifference
We could not humbly aspire
To conflate suffering with desire
But this alloy is the price
Of Our Saviour's sacrifice. - Those who do not know The Lord
In His flesh and in The Word
Strive for contract and content,
Art, good deeds and government
But we are not circumscribed
By that which can be described
But seek and, knowing, know the loss
For failing to redeem the Cross.
Part iii.
- As Samson cried
The dark air clarified
The Lord's will
That to be justified
His power would still abide
With Israel. - That blinded pride
In crude strength horrified
Those who looked on;
In one great stride
He pushed pillars aside,
Left blood and bone. - My Saviour died,
Tortured and crucified
That I might know
The power inside
Is old strength ratified
With new love's glow.
Part iv.
- The Ark too abstract, threatening to rebel
You granted Kings to fractious Israel
But in His manly summons to the meek,
Jesus bade us to turn the other cheek:
The Old resort in struggle with the New
Call us in prayer to reconcile the two. - Though we might put our weapons at Your feet
Laid open to destruction in defeat,
Can this be proxy for our neighbours' will
Who do not wish to suffer earthly ill:
In risking our own children's health and breath
Can we condemn our neighbour's child to death? - Better it is to suffer than to sin
By giving way, though never giving in,
The easy moral is a harsh constraint
Which calls on everyone to be a saint:
Though Abram humbly offered his own son
He took no other that God's will be done. - Yet if the passive risk presages fall,
Pre-emptive action risks the lives of all
Except confronted by clear, imminent harm,
Aggression promised, failure to disarm:
Where dangers of the counter are intense,
Imagination seeks cause for offence. - The earthly power You gave for human plea
Sits oddly with Your Son's loving decree:
But, evil being integral to our lives,
We must aim to curtail it where it thrives,
Our last resort, unworthy of Your Son
Yet, though imperfect, still it must be done.
Part v.
- They stiffly bow
Each proud to plant a wreath,
Thinking of heroes
Not the child wraith,
With conscience clear in outcome and belief:
One man's conscience is another's death. - This soldier, brave
But voluntary corpse,
One of a hundred
From a factory lapse,
Most were bewildered exiles in a copse:
One man's triumph is a town's eclipse. - Justice extorts
Where mercy might succeed,
Heroes and victims
Badged not understood,
One Victor's history turns mess into good;
Losers are barely read.
Part vi.
- We see the fallen not those yet to fall,
Towers and troopers more alive on screen
Than domes and maidens on the bunker wall
Whose fate is crossed, anonymous and clean. - Too late we wring our hands and Holy Writ,
Having wished evil's labyrinths away
We lift our prayer portmanteau and get out of it
Leaving those we sent along the way. - Evil and war are the world's worst kept secret
Where peace and subtlety brim with surprises:
Trapped in a culture of backwards regret,
We miss the future the present devises.
Part vii.
- Eternal peace
Deeper than all we know,
Too bright for Space
Yet we perceive its glow:
Were there account for every human tear
And every woe in every woeful year
All would be cancelled in the instant calm
Of heaven's sweet commandment to disarm. - Eternal peace
Beyond all we enjoy,
Slaves of caprice
To conquer and destroy:
Were there repose for every human heart
With all the solace nature could impart
It would not rank beside the soul's content
In sacred comradeship and government. - Eternal peace
Past all our will to love,
Accorded place
By what we strive to prove:
Were we to love in body and in mind
With all the grace The Spirit has refined
It would be pale as water in plain glass
As rich will be the love that will surpass. - Eternal peace
Before the scheme of time,
Sharp as the blunt device
Of single prime:
Though we be factious in our cramped dissent
Usurping Your eternal government
No fortress built by human can withstand
The gentle armaments at Your command. - Eternal peace
From exercise of will,
No stretch to race, no promise to fulfil:
Though we have loved You in the Spirit's glow
And striven to the nearest we can know
Our souls yearn for the time that strife will cease
And bring us to our last, eternal peace.