Seed of Yahweh

"I will establish your seed forever" ~ Psalm 89:4

I’ve been thinking about this seed of Yahweh

conceived in love, planted in the cave of a woman-child,

confined and nurtured in her soft dark womb,

nourished with her every heartbeat.

How cells of cell multiplied until he fluttered light,

then stretched and rose like yeast bread in her warm belly

until her body could no longer contain him.

How the walls contracted, kneaded,

and she pushed him down that painful passage toward the light,

how with a gush of blood and water he slid wet into the night,

and she laid that Light of lights in a cold stone trough.

Whose hands touched him first, this Son of man?

His earthly father’s?

Those of a midwife?

Did his parents count his perfect fingers—

the fingers of God himself?

I think about those baby hands that fisted around their fingers,

that held their hands as he grew in wisdom and in stature,

about those hands that planted seeds in soil,

shaped wood, chiseled stone,

touched and healed and held a scroll,

fingers that wrote in dirt.

How one day he, that Light of lights,

staggered down another narrow, painful passage,

toward the darkness, pummeled and pushed by

hands of others as his own slivered palms quivered

with the weight of a heavy wooden cross.

How he was stretched wide, this bread of life,

how this one whose hands pounded nails to build

accepted pounded nails meant to break Creator by created,

and how Mary’s heart exploded

with the pain of it and for the love of him.

I think of how his own limp body could not hold him,

and with a gush of blood and water he slipped his earthly life,

how Mary may have counted and caressed

and kissed those blood-stained fingers.

I think about this seed of Yahweh,

this Son of man, planted in a cave of earth,

confined to cold dark stone

until the tomb could not contain him,

how he stretched and rose, this bread of life,

and how he comes to us still and plants himself in our stone cold hearts,

becomes our heartbeat for the love of us.

So our hearts explode with the pain of it and for the love of him.

And we cannot contain him.

~Sandra Heska King (2011)