Ikigai

Dear Heart, You've Longed

Shame

Dear Heart, you've longed for purity

Yet find the more you long, you see

The flaws in you. You cannot be

The person that you want to be.

For you are not angelic, dear,

You're filled jealousy and fear,

And bitterness, and easy rage.

You spill the ink across the page

Of every deed you hoped was good

By praising idols that you should

Have never raised, and now can't flee

Because, dear heart, they're part of Me.

Despair

Purge dross, wash stain, and cry for sin.

Dear Heart, it's here you must begin.

You have begun: the anguish in

Your soul for all the wrong you've been

And done – it burns, it sears, it breaks

The last lone pieces. Slowly takes

Over your every nerve and pore;

It fills with shame, and blank horror.

You see yourself at last. This grim

And cruel paragon of sin.

Despair, Dear Heart, of all your pleas,

For what could ransom all of these?

Hope

Courage, Dear Heart, you're not your own,

But bought by He who's overthrown

The darkest demons in their Hell

That He might reach your soul, and sell

His own pure blood to buy you free,

And fill you with His purity.

Dear Heart, redeemed by such as Him,

You do not even own your sin.

He's cast it deep into the sea;

East and West could not farther be

Than He has made you from your sin.

Dear Heart, fear not the ill within,

For He who holds the earth and sky

Remembers every tear you cry

And keeps them all. Your precious name

He has redeemed from every shame

And no despair may drown your joy:

The gifts He gives none can destroy.

Love

Not death, not powers, not then, not now,

Not evermore, nor anyhow,

Can aught in creation snatch from His hand

The one that He loved before the land

Or seas were made. He chose you then

And chooses you now, again and again

And again forever and ever, amen.