Give me (I)s to see.

El-roi, the God who sees,

I am in need of other (I)s.

Knit I to I, eye to eye.

Just for today,

spike the highway of my destruction.

Stop my solo soul, O bent on

cruising past waving friends;

crashing into walls false made

to keep out the good things

I fear will destroy me;

careening into immovable things

meant to slow me down, moving me

to find salvation, restoration, fuel.

Give me (I)s to see.

El-roi, the God who sees,

I am in need of other (I)s.

Adjust my compass enough that

True North no longer looks like me alone,

but is a crowded mirror of cheering fans

convinced that I’ll go nowhere

if only moving in a single direction –

away from everyone else.

If drift I must, then I drift by trust

and let my newly plumbed back

be offered as the saddle for

another’s weary feet.

Give me (I)s to see.

El-roi, the God who sees,

I am in need of other (I)s.

God of the lonely and liminal,

the comfortable and cast-out,

the malleable and malevolent,

the somber and superimposed,

drive out the wedges driven between us

and re-align the bentness of this

favorable company, no stranger to the strange,

but magnet to the unattractable.

My completion is not me,

it is them. It is us.

Give me (I)s to see.

El-roi, the God who sees,

I am in need of other (I)s.

ferret out the worms of destruction

happily dining on my best offering.

If the result is nourishment for others,

let my spiritual entrails be ground up,

minced and mashed, chopped and chewed,

until those most needful find me.

Let them grow fat on my pain,

nourished in my darkness.

Send out your scout to scout me out

of unfinished relinquishments and

help to bear the brunt of

your foot on my heart.

Give me (I)s to see.

El-roi, the God who sees,

I am in need of other (I)s.

Step with boots of Gethsemane-dirt

on this barely-beating muscle

so inclined to be still when

faster and ferocious beats the heart of God.

Find me, O God of Embrace.

Find me and, give me back, so that,

to see myself is to see you looking back

through emblematic eyes belonging to others.

Let my newest breath come when I

breathe deep the fragrance of those

for whom you died.

El-roi, the God who sees,

Give me your (I)s to see.

 Picture: www.rapgenius.com

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Robert Alan Rife

Robert Rife, M.A., minister of worship and music for Yakima Covenant Church (formerly Westminster Presbyterian) in Yakima, Washington, is a self-proclaimed book-nerd-word-herder, multi-instrumentalist (including Highland Bagpipes!), singer-songwriter, studio musician, choral director, poet, and liturgist. He maintains two personal blogs: Innerwoven and Robslitbits. He also blogs at Conversations Journal. Robert describes his vocation as exploring those places where life, liturgy, theology, and the arts intersect with and promote spiritual formation.

Latest posts by Robert Alan Rife (see all)

• Incoming – God’s Hope in Our Tedium - December 13, 2017
• Mercy – The Dare of Jesus - January 20, 2016
• Soul care or self-pity? - August 21, 2015