Turn my crying and my sighing
Into laughter in the rain,
Bend to bless my raw emotions
Lying prostrate in their pain.
Help me leave the graveside singing,
Trust myself to Your great might.
O dear Lord, refresh my spirit,
Pierce my darkness with Your light.
Walk into my deadness shouting,
“I’m alive, lift up your eyes,
For the tomb of all your troubles
By my life can be surprised.”
He who raised His Christ at Easter
Has the power to impart
All the Spirit’s grand dynamic
To my fainting, failing heart.
You can do it if I let You
You’re the best that life can be,
This the reason for Golgotha
For Your dying agony.
Where to find the healing medicine
That reaches deep inside?
It is in Your resurrection,
It’s the reason that You died.
On Good Friday You took all my sins
And paid for all my mess,
So it must be galling now to see
My life so passionless.
Forgive my cool indifference
To Your searing sufferings,
My meager grudging service,
My small change in offerings!
O Jesus, mercy on me
When the souls for whom You died
Don’t know it broke Your Father’s heart
When You were crucified.
My flimsy faith must grieve You
My trivial life depress
The One who gave His child away
To win me “Ever-ness.”
In the heat of all my heartaches
Send the Spirit’s cooling balm,
In this magic melting moment
Cradle me within Your arms.
Send Your Pentecostal Spirit
Drench me with Your saving Grace,
God forgive my part in causing
All those tears on Your face.
In this hallowed Easter moment
May I find new hope in Thee,
By Your fragrant precious presence
O dear Lord, lay hold of me.
Till I get home one Easter
And I hear the angels sing,
And You mend my broken image
And You heal my everything.
Then the crooked will be straightened
And the blind shall see Your Throne,
The orphans find a Father
And the homeless find a home.
The rejected have a family
And the twisted mind be sane,
Then the tortured won’t remember
All the horror and the pain.
There the poor will have a mansion,
And the rich one share his wealth,
The refugee a country
And the little child her health.
When our strong, eternal bodies
Run beside eternal streams,
Then the miracle of heaven
Will exceed our wildest dreams.
So take my numbered moments
That You’ve counted out for me,
And help me live them as You did
In light of Calvary.
And when I get home one Easter
And I see You in that hour,
May I bring my lost world with me
By Your resurrection power!
By Jill Briscoe © 2007, p.77, The Garden of Grace