A woman sits amidst the wreckage
of a building ravaged by American bombs.
In her arms she holds the lifeless body of her son,
who mere days before played in the streets of the city.
A rain falls from a grey sky as his head lurches back into her lap.
The rain is nothing compared to her tears, which will not, cannot stop.
She remembers her ancestor, how she left
with her son, carrying nothing but a satchel of bread,
a skin of water, and a promise from a God she named El Roi:
‘The God who sees.’ The promise was that He would always see,
her, her son, and their descendants, be they as numerous as the stars.
And she thinks, as her son’s eyes
loll backwards in their dead sockets,
and the tears that will not, cannot stop,
cascade from her dark eyes, that God is surely blind.
Accuse her not, dear Christian,
from the comfort of your pleasant pew,
whilst ignoring the very genocide we pay for.
The blindness is not hers. Nor is it God’s. It is ours.
Under Christ’s Mercy,
Brent
The captioned image is a detail of Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert by Frederick Goodall, 1867.
See, Genesis 16; 17:20; 21:8-21; and 25:12-18
