Roughly handled, bruising flesh, deliberately hurting 

grabbed wrists, tied to abloody post, clothes ripped

away from his now public exposed, vulnerable back. 

—

Bowed to the inevitable, he prayed for the men around,

and as the first stroke struck his soft flesh, he groaned,

and prayed for healing for creation, hearing its screams.

—

Each stroke for the hungry, the abused, belittled, lost,

each stroke collected the child dead in the bomb dust,

each violent stroke the violence we mete out to another.

—

Slowly the whip fell, and with each he drew in their wrongs,

the violence of torture, murder, raping children, cruelty, lying,

slavery, oppression, crime, homophobia, misogyny. hatred.

—

50 lashes and still they fell as did each evil deed that 

humans perpetrated on each other and to the earth.

60, 70, 80,90, 99, 100 – blood and flesh flew. And there

—

In his heart tragedies took root, past, present and future,

screaming he enfolds it all like a sponge—asking – How 

else? He rings our the last drops of love, blossoming red.

—

Staggering, falling, people’s heads wagging, he walked,

to the humiliating, torturous violence of the broken tree,

carrying on his back the burden, a self-destruct world.

—

As the nails bit so he saw afar the horrors of genocide,

the hatred for one God fearer for another, dictators who

ruled by death and he held them to himself and saw the

—-

darkness of human ways, heard the screams of innocence

and slowly the gruesome power of evil filled his gentle mind,

“My God, My God,” he cried, ‘Why have you forsaken me?”

—

He looked at those gathered around the cross weeping,

those rejoicing, those who could not understand, even

those who had whipped him and he took their burden crying

—

‘Father, forgive them, they know not what they are doing.”

and then he knew, at last it was over. Love had conquered.

And for eternity people can know the power of His Love.

—

Power to heal, to reconcile, to forgive and so finally,

he sighed his last breath, and tearful men and women

carried his broken body to a tomb, despairing of death.

—

Secretly in the nights God healed that wounded body

Healed the wounded world and wounded people but

now evil prowls 

incessantly. 

Despairing 

of love.