Agony in the Garden
If I love you the way that God loves the world, would you overlook my wrath and slaughter too?
Could you come clean and confess all your wickedness to me?
Would my love make you want to tell the truth?
Or would your fear win, and keep hidden parts of you?
Look in my eyes and find the nerve you need to speak of every hellish deed.
Show me where your hands have been, describe all the great and terrible things those beautiful eyes have seen, on and on until you have told me everything.
Do you believe that I could love you anyway?
Or do you think stained hands are unfit to hold?
The past is persuasive so I know it has convinced you otherwise, but I promise the love you are deserving of is unconditional.
But you need faith in that, because if you don’t believe it then it will never be true. Miracles like this cannot be witnessed through the grit and the grime of a pessimistic view.
If I love you the way that Jesus loved you, would you make me suffer to prove it too?
If unconditional love sounded too good to be true, would your paranoia bring persecution with it?
How many times will you deny knowing my love before the sun comes up?
Would you wash your hands of me and point the finger at insecurity?
Would you begin to caress my skin with whip lashes?
You crown me in thorns then decide that a monarchy alone is not enough for you. Now you want a martyr, too.
Please don’t let your disbelief in this miracle only be quieted by my passion.
Don’t let regret for your actions only be heard after I have fallen silent on your cross.
Tell me: who taught you that love is the reward for enduring abuse?
Tell me: where did you learn that agony is affection’s only proof?
Tell me: how does someone accepting pain from you prove their feelings to be true?
”Unconditional” does not mean “death-proof” and every time you test someone’s love the way you do,
it leaves behind weeping sores and open wounds.
The spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak.
I will never suffer for love and to expect that of me is obscene.
It won’t ever matter how much someone loves you if you don’t believe.
It won’t ever matter how much you love someone because the way you act forces them to flee.
Here I am, offering you freedom and heaven, but it is only submission and endurance that you want from me.
Has my kindness made a fool of me or did you mistake acceptance and leniency as a sign that I will stay through any cruelty?
Unlike the lamb, I do not desire slaughtering.
Unlike the sheep in your life, I refuse to be butchered quietly.
No.
I will not be consumed.
I have been alive long enough now to know that it will never make me holy to suffer for you.
