A broken tulip

For he poured out his life to death.

For the first time he knows what it means to be finished. Bright, shining Word of God. Holy water. He takes his life and pours it out on the feet of his disciples. Clear water, burning with intensity. He pours it out for the wet-starved Samaritan woman. He pours it out in the desert, alone with his God.

His life runs away from him like a living thing which he has set loose in accordance with his Word, his Father’s will. In the scroll of the Book it is written…

Oh Word, it has been said of you, that the Father was pleased to crush you, if you would make yourself a guilt offering.

And so you tie the towel, take the pitcher, and pour out your life to death, emptying yourself. The first taste eternal sufficiency had of the word we know so well. Empty.

You who knew no sin, you knew all the echoes of sin in this noisy world: how temptation and hunger and disease and betrayal bound off the narrow walls of our existence to deafen us mortals.

The father of lies taunted you, “how can you love the Father when he makes a poor little girl crippled?” But you looked at her with tears. You must know something about the Father that we have forgotten, that the Liar never knew, for at one touch you set her bones straight and you said, “That is the Father’s touch.” We knew it to be true.

Then the woman. She was turned crooked, bent downward by playing into the lust of men to find…. what? herself? Love? With a word you straightened her heart and with a touch you lifted her head. “It is the Father.”

And so you took your life into your hands to pour it out, seeing death come nigh because the Father who made whole was asking you to be broken, promising you that because of the screams of your tortured heart you would see your many children. See, and be satisfied.

All your children would be made whole, each taking up a life to pour out, until all the ugliness of a world dusty with the evil of millenia and millions of crooked hearts is washed away. Because we pour out our lives to death.