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Rooster
My favorite line from this poem is “I am the answer to the question, “Which came first, the rooster or the dawn?” “
It sings to me of the way I feel on my best days – that I was made for the work I do, and it was made for me. We (my work and I) are ‘the making of’ one another. I call it forth, it calls me forth, God calls us forth together. One can’t quite separate or analyze it.
But, oh, those other days! Like Rooster, there are times I move through daily duties and activities in a drowsy, ‘natural’ way that leaves me good-tired, but horizontal, too flat to enter into the highest work of vocation, which demands a vertical, prayerful posture and an awakened soul.
And, like Rooster, I sometimes think too much of ‘my’ work and get busy at it without a moment to spare for prayer, for opening to grace, for wonder at the miracle of God’s calling and using me.
Finally, the tension between “God will do the work without me,” and “I will get the work done in my own strength” is resolved in the third stanza.
I, in my own being, am God’s response to the work He wants done through me – “the answer to the question”!
Glorious the participation in His work! Perfect the role He allows me to play! Wonderful the moment when the called hears the call and my calling overflows to meet my Caller! In this poised, perfect, sweet place, I am unafraid – not because the world is just not my problem and not because I’ve got everything under control, but because He is. My senses are not merely satisfied, or used defensively, but fulfilled in the reality that perfectly corresponds to my yearnings.
The Son is up. He is risen, and therefore I am rising. Just think how well I sleep after a day spent crowing and knowing about such a dawn!
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