Poem: "Novelty"

The cops ditch their cusses
in trash cans behind the house
so they don't mess up their case
Somebody reads the news and
cringes every way you can
Others read it and puke air and jokes
Novelty
Like a hula girl on a dashboard
a window decal of a cartoon t-rex
eating a stick figure family
It's a novelty story -
"Dog Drives Car"
"Elvis Dead at 42"
"Stain Shaped Like Virgin Mary"
It's a novelty story
Forget about it Goodnight

Inspiration:

http://mountpleasant.dailyvoice.com/news/case-of-incest-leads-to-four-deaths-one-in-hudson-valley/735660/

http://www.heraldcourier.com/news/national/connecticut-killer-in-incest-case-alerted-daughter-s-adoptive-family/article_47411199-4535-5f43-9473-abc5db16e926.html

The King's Signature

(Edit, 4-17-26: We learn something new every day. Sometimes we learn something we should have learned when reading about a former king of Belgium we praised in a blog written eight years ago. Today I learned King Baudouin was complicit in the 1961 murder of Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Baudouin had knowledge of the plan to kill Lumumba by political opponents of the latter, but did nothing to interfere. Rather than delete this blog lauding Baudouin's action in 1990, I've chosen to leave it up, with this edit, to remind readers that being anti-abortion does not make a person truly pro-life.) 

"St. Wolfgang and the Devil" by Michael Pacher

In 1990, a bill was approved by the Belgian Parliament that would legalize abortion. The king at the time, King Baudouin, morally opposed the bill. But as with most monarchies in modern times, a king or queen's approval is basically formality with little or no consequence. So, given his firm stance against abortion, and not having the power to simply quash the proposed legislation, King Baudouin asked the government to declare him "unable to govern" for twenty-four hours so that he'd have no part in the bill and would not have to sign it, though his signature would have only been formality.

King Baudouin's integrity made me think of how we as Christians should avoid evil even in its "formalities," so to speak - the king so despised what he felt to be wrong that he gave up his powers, however limited and formal, to avoid even putting pen to the paper that represented it. 

I wish I had those kinds of guts. I wish I could stand so firmly in my convictions that I refuse to be linked to evil even in a form so small as my signature: "Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?"

"Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." -James 4:4

Anti Gun Control Arguments Addressed By Rambling Mental Patient With No GED

Unfortunately, many people address the gun issue as if there are only two sides, two extremes: those whose view of guns makes them Amish, and those whose love of guns makes them Ted Nugent. Many speak and react to these arguments as if there is no in-between, and that's one of the factors that leads to words without reason, discussion that turns to strife and argument rather than dialogue. I believe you should be able to own a gun, but I also believe the gun should not be the ungodly idol we've made it; when we have idols, we can't see the good and the bad in them. A gun should be seen as a tool, but a weapon in only extreme cases of self-defense or lawful, sanctioned warfare. 

Its owners should not appoint themselves as God with the right to take life in just any circumstance, or even take humankind's laws into their own hands. The gun must not be worshiped. 

Here are a few (what I hope are) reasonable rebuttals to many who do just that.

"Abortions kill 730,000 a year! Guns only kill 15,000!"
I'm against abortion, but I know that it's impossible for a woman to enter a school and abort twenty-six people in less than five minutes. The two are completely different and must be looked at and assessed differently. Social media posts using the "other things kill people too" argument also use cancer deaths, suicide rates, car accidents, and drug overdoses, comparing the numbers with those of gun deaths, and implying that gun violence should not be such a concern because abortion deaths are higher in numbers. 

This is flawed logic, and an example of "whataboutism." By this argument's own admission, cancer isn't as serious as abortion because there are fewer cancer deaths than abortions; likewise, suicide shouldn't be such a concern because there are less suicides than cancer deaths, at least according to the skewed use of such numbers.
One such post used the Bath School Disaster as its example; in 1927, a madman named Andrew Kehoe blew up a school in Bath Township, Michigan, killing a total of 44 people (38 of them children) and injuring at least 50 more; "not one gun was used!" the image boasted, thereby implying that, because people can use other things than guns to kill people, gun control must be nonsense. But, in 2017, Stephen Paddock used guns to kill 58 people and injure hundreds in Las Vegas. So, by the above logic, Paddock's rampage via gun somehow negates Kehoe's murders via dynamite, again making guns a more serious issue than bombs, and proving gun control is not nonsense.
Of course, that's a flawed way to look at the situation; each tragedy by any means must be looked at in its own context, its own circumstances, its environment and surroundings, etc. They should not be compared to other unrelated tragedies - like car accidents - as ways to dodge the issue.

"This isn't a gun issue - it's a mental health issue!"
Mental illness is absolutely a serious and poorly addressed issue in the United States. But, before you shift the blame to bad mental healthcare, don't use your vote and voice to endorse politicians or parties whose budgets slash mental health funding, as was done by President Trump just last month. And, unfortunately, many politicians whose voting records reflect this are also politicians whose voices for 2nd amendment rights are loud clear; perhaps if those voices were just as loud for better mental health funding, things would be different.

"It's violent video games!"
In 1949 in Camden, New Jersey, Howard Unruh shot and killed a dozen people; in 1966 in Austin, Texas, Charles Whitman shot nearly 50 people. Both rampages were pre-GTA. Both rampages were even pre-Pong. 

"It's violent movies and TV!"
Unless Charles Whitman was motivated by a particularly bloody episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, this makes as much sense as the video game argument.

image by Donna Grethen

"The Founding Fathers would want us to have guns!"
I'm sure they would. Even I want people to be "allowed to have guns." But in Washington's day, it took several minutes to load and fire a single shot from a musket. These men would not be impressed with an AK-47 or an AR-15 - they would be scared out of their minds. Thomas Jefferson would have wet his pantaloons at the blast of a semi-automatic rifle, while Paul Revere would have cried, "'Tis witchcraft! Everyone flee!" (As long as we're imposing what we insist the Founding Fathers "would have" done or said, based on our own various beliefs.)


"It's disrespectful to the victims if we politicize shootings!"
That's not quite the mindset every time a Muslim fanatic drives a car into a crowd of people. Incidents like that become an instant source of argument for stricter immigration laws. We also don't mind "politicizing" the issue of abortion. (But, I suppose that's a bit of whataboutism, which always puts any health discussion to a grinding halt.) Also, the issue of gun control is not a political issue, at least until it becomes distorted into one by politicians. A political issue is a proposed railroad tariff or a trade deal with Portugal. Public safety, ignorance, and murder are human issues, dehumanized when canned rhetoric from politicians makes the victims an afterthought and all logic and reason follows.
If I die of something completely preventable, you have my permission to "politicize" it if your voice and actions could prevent it from happening to someone else.

"We don't blame the knife when someone is stabbed to death, so why blame the gun?"
I don't know any gun law reformers who "blame the gun." The words "blaming the gun" don't apply to the majority of people who are zealous for new gun laws. What they "blame" is the irresponsibility, negligence, and sheer foolishness that has allowed such weapons to be used in these killings.

"What about my hunting rights?"
Weapons like ones used by modern infantry or in the Rambo sequels shouldn't figure into a "hunter's" argument, unless the game they're hunting is a giant mutant deer high on PCP.

"Arm the teachers! Arm the citizens!"
Having a gun does not make a human being any less prone to error, bad judgment, bad aim, mental illness (since that's the true issue here, remember?), or just generally being an evil person, and it certainly doesn't make them a hero. In fact, the armed resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida didn't even enter the school for several minutes during the shooting. He resigned his position afterward. "All it takes to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun!" Unless that "good guy" is, like I would have been in the situation, incompetent and scared.

(Edit, 5-28-22: This past week's massacre of 19 children at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas saw 19 police officers inside the school fail to stop the shooter for 45 minutes before he was finally killed. In fact, a young girl inside the school called 9-1-1 several times, despite officials being just outside and apparently doing little to nothing to stop the shooter.)

"Then we won't arm people with criminal records!"
Many of the deadliest or most notorious mass shooters in United States history have had no criminal record. If they did, many of them were minor or misdemeanor offenses. This includes the aforementioned Unruh and Whitman, as well as James Huberty (shot and killed 21 people at a San Ysidro, California McDonald's restaurant in 1984), Patrick Sherrill (shot and killed 14 coworkers at a post office in Edmond, Oklahoma in 1986), George Hennard (shot and killed 23 people at Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas in 1991), Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (shot and killed 13 people at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999), Seung-Hui Cho (shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia in 2007), Nidal Hasan (shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009), James Holmes (shot and killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado in 2012), and Adam Lanza (shot and killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut).
Lindsay Lohan has a longer rap sheet than all of these men combined.
(EDIT, 3-7-18: It is worth noting, however, that Huberty and Whitman had histories of domestic violence; Huberty's wife even filed a report after an incident, though Whitman's wife did not.)

New gun laws, no matter how well written and reformed, will not stop gun violence. But the right legislation and proper dialogue on the matter can greatly reduce these killings. We have no right to do little or nothing simply because the problem will never go away. The problem, at its core, is human beings and the evil of which we're capable. But because there is no solution to this does not give us license to be idle, to beat our breasts but do nothing. Mortality itself has no solution, but we still care for our bodies and our health - though with the way we've put off this discussion and dismissed the blood of the victims, our inaction belies that we care for anyone's well-being at all.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results."

"There is No God, Because Bad Things Happen"

It's going to be a long night. There's a dog in the apartment above me whose owner leaves it alone for extended periods of time, leaving it to whine and cry for the entire complex to hear. I'm not the biggest fan of dogs, but I hate to hear or see any animal in pain. It tears me up inside, like some sort of Achilles' heel in my gut. I've left two messages with the apartment office, and I'm calling the Humane Society when they open in the morning.

This lonesome, tearful dog that no one hears led me to think of those among us who dismiss God because bad things happen and no one seems to care. (I'm not addressing those who say there's no God "because science"; I'm a high school dropout Creationist who takes a lot of psychiatric medication; any scientific diatribe on my part would be absurd; I already know that my baking soda volcano could not compete with Bill Nye's; mine would, at best, look like your mom's drunk boyfriend Randy - the one who listens to the Fabulous Thunderbirds, like a lot - helped me make it after a case of Keystone and a big fat joint; so, my surrender to the Richard Dawkinseses of the world is signed immediately.)

Anyway, I suppose it's a bit facetious and crude for me to describe them as "people who don't believe in God 'because bad things happen.'" It would be more apt to say: they don't believe in God because of centuries of barbaric wars that have left countless dead, mutilated, orphaned, and impoverished, because of millions of Jews gassed and incinerated at the orders of deluded madmen, because of teenage Armenian girls crucified in an attack on their race, because of atomic bombs dropped on Japan, because of children slain in cold blood at their schools, because of politicians void of conscience and full of Christian bunkum, because all these horrors go on day after day and no loving god stops it.

A friend of mine, a Christian indeed, expressed to me his temptation to ask "why bother believing in God?" and doing good when faced with all of this seemingly unchecked human carnage and gluttony. I likened it to shining light in a very dark place; a single candle is all the more strangely beautiful when it's the only one that flickers in a blackened room. Society, culture, are too far gone, too sick to someday give birth to peace and harmony. If there is intelligent life on planets other than our own, they've long ago made up their minds to stay far away from us, the only race who has an entire genre of jokes called "dead baby jokes."
My mother's favorite song was "What a Wonderful World." Whoever wrote that song was David Spade levels of sarcastic, because it's a horrible world, and it's a dirty lie to tell people anything different. But, although society is screwed, you and I have responsibilities as individuals to do good. As odd as it sounds, we can have wonderful lives in a horrible world. We have been given a duty to shine light for those who are in too much pain to give a toss about our existential crisis; people who are too hungry, their legs too ridden with Khe Sanh shrapnel, their tent cities taken down by heartless city ordinances, to give a second thought to Nietzsche vs. Lewis. They're too busy throwing up and struggling to breathe.

That's who you and I should be helping. The human race will never turn itself into a legion of light. So you and I have to be the tiny candles in the countless darkened rooms of the world.

It's easy for me to say that in an abstract and broad manner of speaking. But what about when those individuals, those children who could grow up to help just one person, become prey not to the twisted human race, but to one twisted human - who God did not stop?

I can give you the perfect example. This is a true story. It's the worst thing I've ever heard in my life. My head has been buried in books about serial killers, cannibals, wars, plagues, corruption, but somehow, this story tops them all. When I read it, I was completely numbed; I'd never heard anything like it before. Imagine a little girl in 1975. Her name was Suzanne. Her mother's new husband was Franklin Floyd, a career criminal who'd been convicted of child molestation. One day, Floyd disappeared with his four new step-children - Suzanne, her two younger sisters, and an infant brother named Philip. The two sisters were later found to have been dropped off at a church; the fate of the infant Philip remains unknown to this day. Their mother tried to file kidnapping charges, but officials told her that because he was their stepfather, Franklin Floyd had a legal right to take them.
Franklin Floyd and young Suzanne wound up in Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia, and Florida, with Floyd raising her and passing her off as his daughter "Sharon," and sexually abusing her the entire time, even documenting it with photos that were found later. By 1990, Suzanne was going by the alias "Tonya" and, once again relocated, was now being passed off as Floyd's wife, and working as a stripper. She gave birth to a son named Michael. Not long after, she decided to run away with a young man she'd been seeing. But before she could, she was killed, just 21 years old, the victim of an apparent hit-and-run. Floyd was the main suspect; he was also the main suspect in the murder of a coworker of Suzanne's a year earlier.
After Suzanne's murder, Floyd put her son Michael into foster care and fled again. During one family's adoption process, it was determined that Michael was not Floyd's biological son with his stepdaughter. This prevented Floyd from legally reclaiming custody of the child in 1994. So he kidnapped Michael at gunpoint from his school and disappeared with him. The boy's whereabouts, or remains, have never been determined. Floyd has given many different statements as to what happened to the child, though as recently as 2015, he admitted to killing him.

God did not rescue Suzanne, Michael, or Philip.

Franklin Floyd, now 74, is currently on death row in Florida.

If there was ever a story that could make someone question God, to ask Him why, to even demand an answer and accuse God of wrong, as Job did, that's the one.

But first, my question to those whose disbelief and disdain for God is based on the suffering in the world, is: on what are you basing your criteria?
Why is God obligated to rescue from hardship? To whom has He made that promise? Why does the genuineness of His love depend on how much or how little pain He allows you to experience?
If one's perception or idea of God is not based on any specific text or doctrine, then those expectations of God are arbitrary and self-concocted - they mean nothing. They're an incomplete contract, written and agreed upon by only one party. If I decided that you are, because I say so, obligated to give me half of your weekly earnings, and you have not agreed to this, what wrong do you do by withholding money from me? What contract have you broken? What hate have you shown me? What right have I to call you evil, let alone declare you to be non-existent because of rules devised by me and me alone?

But, let's suppose one's ideas of God have been built on the Christian Bible. (I don't speak for any other God - there are a wealth of deities, spirits, constellations, trees, goats, fairies, and dictators worshiped in the world, and they're none of my business. But I do speak for the one true God. "What blithering madman is this who claims to be a spokesman for God?"
"the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." -Revelation 19:10.
Christians are called to be about our Father's business.)

From the Bible, one can gather no other portrait of life on Earth than that of an ugly, uncaring, unfeeling world where murderers and thieves are rampant, liars who aid them are abundant, and the cries of those who have been hurt by them seem to fall on deaf ears. The very authors of this Book we came to call the Holy Scriptures complained in howls of bone-chilling agony of the very same things of which we complain - we, who declare God to be a myth because none of us is placed in cosmic bubble wrap.
Even if one uses the Bible as evidence against the God it proclaims, our accusations come to nothing and our own words become a snare to our case, for in it we'll not find that God has promised deliverance for every person from every trial; He has not even reserved special exceptions for the most wonderful people from the most gut-wrenching trials.

God has promised us nothing as it relates to deliverance from the never-ending suffering on this planet. He promises us strength and bravery and the guts to love in the midst of such ugliness, but not deliverance. (Though, being that some would attribute faith and hope and love to mere madness and "viruses of the mind," as Dawkins coined, insanity is a deliverance to some extent.)
What kind of pitiful, pathetic existence we would live if we were exempt and immune from the violence and the slander of this world. Life would be an episode of the Teletubbies and God would be an absentee landlord who couldn't care less about the unfolding of the story of His people and His creation. It wouldn't be a story worth telling.
I'd rather be in danger in a real world than catatonic in a fairy tale world. I have more peace knowing I'm prone to murder, to a tire iron striking the back of my skull for the $17 in my wallet, a menial and unimpressive end, than in a life where I don't have to choose love, to choose to do right. What miserable deeds would our "good deeds" be if they were robotic and compulsive, rather than borne of the choice and the struggle to love and overcome hate and the spewing of venom so that light may prevail.

Gloria Copeland (bluh) was in the news recently for claiming, "If you have Jesus, you don't need a flu shot." Mrs. Copeland does not speak a Biblical truth. Contrary to the prosperity peddling of the Joel Osteens of the world, Jesus did not die to keep you free from ailments; He died to give you eternal life that outlasts a fallen world's mortality, to be a Light in you that outshines the darkness that does not comprehend Him. His blood was shed so that we could be made anew and forgiven for the wretched things we do, things that make the world such a dark place, ugly things we choose to do, just like the killers and politicians, and blame them on an absence of God.
God does not promise us carefree or pain-free lives (if that can be called living). Rather, God promises us eternal life through His Son Jesus, who was abandoned on the cross by the same God we accuse of apathy, all to give us life - not mere existence - peace and joy in His life, His suffering, and in His resurrection. And that life outshines all of the darkness of mere existence. 
Life hurts, but it's worth it. Existence is fleeting. Life is eternal.

If all of that truth meets your ire and disgust, then maybe this God isn't the God for you. I know that sounds pessimistic on my part, and I'd give anything for just one person to believe, but what else can I say? Should I blaspheme and make false promises to you on God's behalf of a life of sunsets and puppies? Should I burst out in tears and beg you to believe in Him? Should I stay up nights highlighting the best Ravi Zacharias quotes? Believe me, if I thought it would bring you to Jesus Christ, I'd carve my prayers for you in the skin of my forearms. But I know it wouldn't lead you to believe. Nothing I can do or say can make a believer in Christ. To think such would be vanity and idolatry. That's a matter between you and the Holy Spirit. My raving about darkness and light is to you like Samson dancing blind before the Philistines. God didn't put me here to serve apologetic theology.

Why, then, did He put me here? To glorify Him, surely, but what else? Who knows? Maybe to be murdered. As grim as that sounds, it is not absurd to think that maybe God has pre-ordained that someday I'll be murdered. Maybe He's used my suffering in the years leading up to my death to soften my heart for the moments after I'm struck, so that I can gasp to my killer that I forgive him as I collapse in a pool of blood. Even if my dying forgiveness did nothing for the killer's repentance and rehabilitation, but fell on a stony heart.
If that's the case, so be it - God owes me no explanation. He owes me no deliverance. He owes me no eternal life, but in His love and grace, and in His own unimaginable suffering on the cross, eternal life has been given to me. And He's given me the audacity, the nerve, the guts to believe.

But before I meet my end by blunt force trauma to the head during a petty robbery, I've got a dog to help.

-with love and anger,
Bud.

"But for him who is joined to all the living there is hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion." -Ecclesiastes 9:4

Poem: "Kids"

You're weird. You talk to imaginary friends.

You whine and make messes. Your parents are hippies.

But when you became a tearless, wordless teddy bear 

taped to a little pink cross,

minding your manners in horrible silence,

I stole away and died a little death.

Why I Wear a Beard

It's kinda depressing.

This is my uncle, Jackey Dale Sturguess. He died in 1995. He was the first in a long string of losses for my family. Nobody seems to remember him. We didn't talk about him as much as we should have after he died. Maybe the adults didn't think we children were old enough to grasp what suicide is. But even when I grew up, I had to pry information out of the rest of my family. Jackey took his own life (or was murdered, depending on how one interprets the evidence - either way, it was all because of drugs).
Nobody remembers him. Even his public arrest records seem to have vanished. Aside from census records, a few photographs, a poorly Xeroxed copy of his autopsy report that I found in the family Bible, and a tombstone bearing the words "Beloved Son, Brother, and Dad," it's as if he never existed. Maybe everyone was too hurt to bring him up. Years after his death, I overheard my grandmother tell someone that my grandfather would "never stop being mad at Jack."

Jackey wore some form of prominent facial hair most of his life, like my father and the rest of the males in my family. Sometimes he had a horseshoe mustache, sometimes a respectable trimmed beard, sometimes a big long ZZ Top chin-slinky. My father said the funeral home cut his beard off.
My mother said it should have been a closed-casket funeral - she said his mouth seemed swollen from the bullet wound. I always found it wrong that they took his beard off, even if Jackey wasn't really there to know it. It just seems like an indignity. That wasn't the only insult - the pastor mentioned suicide one too many times in his funeral sermon, which angered my uncle Mike to the point he had to be restrained from making a scene. It could be said that the whole mourning process was a mess. Maybe that's another reason people were so quick to put Jackey out of their minds. Friends who shot dope with him have long since scattered and destroyed their own selves - or gotten sober and exalted themselves above the memory of such an addict as Jackey. The police who beat him with flashlights have other things to deal with, other dopeheads to bust. And my own family slowly broke up, with anger and stubbornness taking up too much room in the heart for sorrow to have a place.

So, I remember my uncle by wearing a beard, just like he did. It's a reddish brown, slowly graying memorial to Jackey Sturguess. And it works out for me, because I look so good with it, and because I have no chin - without my beard, I look like I'm a character on "Bob's Burgers." Jesus says in Matthew chapter 10, "the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows." God did an awful lot of counting when He totaled the sum of hair that would sprout on my head when He took into consideration this kinky beard. He numbered even more for my uncle Jackey - the hair on his scalp may have fallen off right after high school, but his messy beard that grew to his chest was numbered hair by hair by his Savior. A finite number, great as it may have been, just like the number of his days - greater though they could have been.
Jackey Sturguess was more precious than many sparrows. I'll wear my beard, coarse and unkempt as it may be, to remind me that I too am precious in the sight of the infinite Creator, and the love of His Son has made this beard finer than the coat of the finest sparrow.

It's weird, the whole beard thing - I started it! Now they all do it! They all either look like Rasputin or your dad a year after the divorce (my particular form of beard is known as "the Jethro Tull"). But when I see everyone imitating the Sturguess style, I'm not only flattered, but I'm reminded of my uncle - forgotten in that weird, slow shuffle of time and loss, but not before the sight of our Savior.

Dang I'm interesting.

"As for man, his days are like grass;
as a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
For the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more."
-Psalm 103

The Jashubite Woman's Prayer

“I am a Jashubite, of the family of Issachar. A man seized me behind the thicket, and he went into me and violated me. And now he must marry me. He may not divorce me all the days of his life.
The Law says that if a man seizes a woman and forces himself upon her, and she is betrothed to another man, then the man must be killed. He has done no different than if he had risen up in the field against his sister and killed her. I could have seen his blood stain the stones as he was crushed and cursed. But the Law says that because I am not betrothed, the man who violated me must marry me and care for me all the days of his life. He will give my father fifty shekels, and then I will be his wife.
I mourned and pulled at my hair, but I could not weep. I tried to claw tears from my eyes. The more I could not weep, the angrier I became. I seethed with hate for my new husband. This man whose eyes were once filled with lust and madness now droop to the ground in defeat – I am his defeat, because he cannot be rid of me. I am his burden. Why should he go about lamenting? Am I not the one he held to the dirt, behind the thicket? Am I not the one who screamed, whose cries went unheard? Am I not the one who watched the sparrows fly away in fear as he howled? Am I not the one who watched them fly away as I tried to ignore the pain, and the dripping of the blood, until he was done with me?
But he will never be done with me. I am a chain to his ankle.
        God, why must this be? This is the Law You gave! You alone are righteous and there is none like You! Far be it from You to let the man go without stoning, without punishment of death! Far be it from You to let him glare at me as if I were a chain to him – I am no chain to him, he is a chain to me! He violated me, Lord!
God, why does Your Law give us such statutes? Why mustn’t I wear both linen and wool? Why mustn’t I eat what chews the cud but whose hooves are not divided? Why mustn’t my brothers plow with an ox and a donkey together? Why mustn’t I fall in love with a Moabite if he should treat me well?
My mother came to my father’s aid when he fought with Shuah, the son of Ebal, whose land is next to my father’s – her hand was cut off, according to Your Law, because she attacked the man’s genitals. Look! Her hand is gone, cut off at the wrist for defending her husband! Why should I be given to one of this hideous man’s hideous brothers if he dies and does not give me children? Why should I look into a babe’s face and know he is the seed of a man I can never love? Is no one to be condemned for this iniquity? Will no one be condemned for this evil? Where is the mighty man of valor to save me?
God, deliver me from bitterness! God, You will make it right! My soul is bitter, my Lord! May the Almighty give me wisdom from what I do not understand, from what I despise. Your prophet Moses said, after he gave Your Law, that You will raise up a Prophet. Moses said it is Him we must hear. Will the Prophet make us to hear good? Will He make us to hear more statutes about linen and wool, more statutes concerning the animals with divided hooves, and how I am to be passed from hideous brother to hideous brother if they die without giving me a child I cannot look in the eye?
The Prophet is from You, God.
Far be it from Him to leave undone what is right.
You have answered me, Lord. The Prophet You give will make everything right. Lord, the Prophet You send will make sense of the weights and the measurements. He will make sense of the ox without the muzzle, the leaven, the sprinkling of lamb’s blood, the deaths, the wrongs done to me. I have never concerned myself with lofty things, O Lord, never concerned myself with things too great and too profound for me. But I have no choice with this ugly, profound thing.
May Your Prophet come quickly. I am bitter at heart. May He make everything right in this bramble and brier. May He make my screams to be precious. May He do what is right with my attacker and his howls. The sparrows who flew away, may He send forth as messengers.
God, may Your Prophet come quickly. I am bitter and sick of love.”

"Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow." -1 Peter 1:10-11

-from Sheep Named Spike by Cpt. Bud Sturguess