Unbinding

When Martha had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” John 11:28-44 


Unbinding

We are not simply pages in a book
bound up tight with cloth and string
nor are we simply dying decaying flesh
wrapped up to keep the stench at bay.

Control is a thing we reach for
never grasping never able to hold back
the possibilities and the love which flourish
despite our very best efforts to tie them down.

Being set free is often too honest a state
we ache to hide back inside convention
yet to be bound up is akin to dying slowly
to be set free is the heart of a loving God.

The whispers deep  in our fractured soul
remind us that we were made in God's image
our small infant bodies had heaven within
and in our freedom we find paradise again. 

The strong and powerful will bind the weak
yet this binding is  not permanent or holy
the innocents will become strong in freedom
walls will fall, stones will roll and they will live again.