Act 6:
The Return of the King: Redemption Completed
Conclusion and Benediction: The Face of God
Conclusion and
Benediction
As the wise men concluded their stories at evening’s end
Prayers and blessings would rise up like campfire smoke
The story echoing and stillness in the hope—transcend
And the minstrels would play their final chords
And the hymn singers their final choruses to the Lord
Prayers were offered up and chants—incantations
The crowd would fade into the night back to their own places
The circle shrinking as less light reflected off fewer faces
The poets would add midnight oil to their lamps
Light their pipes and ladle out more brew
The morning was a long way off for them to be through
The images and prose floated like music—the lyrics
presupposed
They knew they would not sleep until it was written in verse
So without plan, reservation, or thought—
they would not
rehearse
Quill and ink scratched paper frantically in final prose
The poets proclaimed, “This is how the story goes . . .”
Once we walked in the loving gaze
In Eden’s beauty paradise
On heavenly earth; on heavenly sod
Our transgressions made us outcasts
The wind withered the land
The fallen outnumbered the sand
None could rest, not kings in their riches
Nor the poor with outstretched hand . . .
And the prophets cried out
The priests offered sacrifice and praise with shout,
And the kings waged war and decreed
Until it was clear, all people bleed
And silence deafened the people in need
Then the starry night came. . .
Wise men were called from the East
Back to their Prince of Peace
With gifts of worship so fine and fair
The Light had entered darkness
After four hundred years of silence
For all to live, who once had died
The Shepherds came with staff and rod,
And these wise men, to see the face of God
In former days, and in many ways
God spoke and now by His Son,
He walks again with His people
His face and their face; seen through and through
To once again walk in that loving gaze
In the Glory of the face of God
To be right again with our God
Heaven came down and intimacy restored
Both rich and poor have seen their Lord
“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in
time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us
by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made
the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His
person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by
Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance
obtained a more excellent name than they.”
