Lord, let Your light erase from sullen skies,
The dark aurora of diaspora.
O that the veil be lifted from men’s eyes!
The ectoplasm of the ego’s aura,
Its subtle semblances and subtler show
By which the world is blinded by its god!
Lord, halt the Sauls of Tarsus You foreknow,
Who rampant with omission ride roughshod
Upon Your Word, another’s cause to plot.
Give sight to them by lightning-bolt to look
Through dazzled eyes at that which they thought not
To be – not in Torah – not of the Book
They thought their mentors knew and understood,
Who own the Tree, but do not name the Wood.

Grant us the keys to fit the Hebrew lock
The heart to hold Your ancient people dear,
The faithfulness to tend and feed Your flock
As hour by hour the dreadful day draws near.
We watch the moments dawning on the clock
At any hour, Yeshua will appear!

Shall You not use the foolish things to save
The Jews? Shall You whose stave’s affront is stark
Not choose an instrument as blunt to brave
Their deep hostility, Your people’s dark
Demonic enmity, the lies that pave
The way of Cain, encrypted with his mark?

Let us restore a true sound to our songs,
Set right the wrongs enacted in our past,
Bring better news. The gospel still belongs
To Jews! The veil is lifting now at last!
The Israel of God stands firm, as throngs
Of global enemies fall back, aghast.

Yeshua, grasp us in Your grip to know
Your purpose Lord, Your great integrity,
Your covenant and promises aglow
With wisdom, faithfulness and verity.
Anoint us with Your presence here below
To point Your nation to its destiny.

We are the Branches
of the Olive Tree
Israelites returning
to our Stock
our Root, and Rock,
We are blended
by the Oil of Gold
with Branches
of the wild name,
through Water,
Blood, and Flame.
We are the
Residue, returning
to the Tree,
Wormwood once, where
avalanches
of despair and tears
have ground
two thousand years,
without relief,
in fears and unbelief.
Your Word,
We have disowned
for talmud,
deadwood, wild hay
and stubble.
We have trod the
mud and straw
for rubble of reward.
We are Your
captives, Adonai,
returning to
The Most High Rod of
Jesse’s Stem
Now graft us Lord,
restored to God,
to be Your sevenfold
unblemished
lamp of beaten gold,
resplendent
in Messiah’s camp,
and good
and brightly burning.

Let us not fall asleep again.
Let us acquit ourselves as men
Identified with Israel,
Whatever cost Your Word may spell.
Jerusalem is at the wall.
For her the wormwood and the gall.
We taste her terror on our tongues,
Draw breath with her into our lungs.
We are “in You” regenerate to share
With every Jew, Yeshua’s care,
Yeshua’s tears, Yeshua’s pain.
Let us not fall asleep again.

Let us repenting weep again.
Let this to them be latter rain,
Revelation of Messiah
Standing with them in the fire.
In their adversity, we pray
For Your compassion in this day,
Your godly fear, humility,
Your love, Your faith’s tranquillity.
On bended knees, request Your power,
Your great resources for this hour
When Armageddon numbs the brain.
Let us, repenting, weep again.

Let us Your Torah keep again,
Your promised treasure, Christ our gain.
Ransomed by His blood to be
United in the Olive Tree,
The wild branches of the Rock
Grafted into Israel’s stock.
Yeshua, with them all we mourn,
Our egos shorn, our garments torn.
If lakes of Jewish blood be shed,
Then for their sakes, for whom You bled,
Bleed us! Forgive our guilt and stain.
Let us Your Torah keep again.

Let us not fall asleep again.

How shall we deny that You have spoken?
We abhor ourselves and our resources!
Jewish strength has finally been broken!
Yahweh Tsavaoth! – The god of forces
Implements his course of desolation.
The Antichrist usurps the Temple Mount
With blasphemy! With abomination!
O do not charge this guilt to our account!
Save Israel! – Be swift to intervene!
This is Your land. We face the terrible –
The huge dismay of piercing you, the One
Our people have rejected and refused a home,
We honoured Caesar. Now we are undone,
Despised, abused. O come! Yeshua come!

You bore the curse of sin before my birth’s antiquity,
Before the bedrock of the world was laid, or creature made
Or my iniquity was manifest; or men in Adam had
Betrayed you with a kiss.
You set before me in the Potter’s Field possibility of rest, and hope.
I cope, but cannot yield.
My God and Intercessor, Saviour! Who can comprehend
His own behaviour, or calculate the cost to gain the things
We fear to lose? Choosing to unchoose the cross,
We clutch the currencies of loss
As Judas chose the money-bag of stolen things, too hot to hold,
Too cumbersome to wield.

And who could question or mistake the thing?
It felt as though a vagrant wind’s wing brushed
Our dormant senses to awakening
With terrible zeal, and zest of spice crushed.

Can there be something fragrant in grinding
Grief’s unspoken words, memories unhushed
And inconsolable with soul-blinding
Sorrows, tomorrow’s cruelties unrushed?

Fear’s nausea, hope’s margins narrowing
Beyond unquiet pain, to limit pushed;
Its instrumental tooth-prongs harrowing
These clods of body, desolate and bushed.

Faith almost orphaned, paled at evening,
Ploughed under deep beneath an anguish flushed
With heat of unremitting pressuring;
Till sunset saw our Master’s face, and blushed.

To sense or sight, no hint of hope appears.
This solid night-long grieving liquefies
The dawn of yet another day to tears.
I lie bereft. Bereaving light denies
The value of my dandelion years.

Prone years, disintegrated, out of joint;
Antarctic winds have blown their seed away.
Time past revolves around my centrepoint
Of present prospects for a future day,
Already guaranteed to disappoint.

So does it seem to reason, and to sense.
Unsteady options rush my mind in thought
Unthinkable – caught in evanescence
Between pathology and overwrought
Revolt, each faculty strung taut and tense.

Must I accept these fraught unwanted hours
In slow motion, when white-hot agonies,
All firestorms, incinerate the flowers
That once bloomed prettily in memories
Of expectation’s past resilient powers?

Disease can not be left behind. Instead
I find for ease, that I can emigrate
With resurrected mind to shed my dread –
In other tongues emancipate my state
Though languishing unhealed upon this bed.

O past comparison, heroic and triumphant One,
We cast our merits to the dust beneath Your feet.
The sheaves of golden wheat we wave before You
Praise Your virtues and Your righteousness alone.

We follow You, arrayed in Your apparel,
Brighter than the driven snow upon Your vacant grave.
The fronds of palm that pave the road You ride on,
Celebrate with humbled pride the greatest victory ever won.

Complete in You, our virgin purity, You are the substance
Of our songs. To You belongs the credit for each melody we sing,
Each lyric offering we bring, perfected in your blood,
Our blessed good and only wise exalted God, our wondrous King.

Another’s agony, a mother’s pain
Is all conjecture, an enclosed domain.
Mere words cling claustrophobic to the brain.
We sigh for language that can bear the strain –

Or try to elevate, or craft, or write
Our darkest paper poetry with white
Prognoses to illuminate the night,
By cultured arguments instead of Light.

And so we stumble at the Stumbling-Stone,
Where verse becomes perverse, it’s comfort-zone
More like a crafted camouflage and clone
Of other christs, while He remains alone.

His heart is mirrored in another place,
Wherein by tender touch and kind embrace,
Illiterates can read God’s words of grace
In fonts of pity on a human face.