A Broken World Bound Up

A Poem by P.J. Wenzel

Maybe you feel as I do
When you observe the world today
That things just seem so broken
That things ought not be this way

What I see brings me low
Raises questions within my soul
Opens pleading fountains from my eyes
For the answers I’d like to know

I see the cancer eating
Away at healthy bones
I see the orphan sitting
And trembling all alone

I see the widow’s suffering
And know not what she thinks
What emotions run within her
The sorrows that she drinks

Anxieties and panic
Disordered thoughts and minds
Terror and doubt are written
On the hearts of all mankind

I see tornados ripping
Through a town in dead of night
Tearing lives asunder
All this brings me fright

Whole nations are in mourning
Under grip of pestilence
Wearing masks, and gloves are donning
With no bodily resistance

When raging seas
and lightenings flash
When cancer kills
And vehicles crash

I take these things to heart
A struggle within my breast
From these and other calamities
Can my soul not find its’ rest?

But that is not the way it ought
Or how you wanted it to be
When you planted us in paradise
Beneath a flowering tree

Once there was a couple
Who worked with no toil or pain
Who counted God a friend
Who knew Him by his name

But since that time in history
in world’s great groaning song
Our story has been blackened
By our great and evil wrongs

Our hearts within us ache
For the devastation here
Who can fix this broken world
And wipe away our tears?

Who can calm the raging seas
With one omnipotent command
Cleanse our bodies from disease
And lawlessness remand

Who can undo what’s been done
Who can renew what is broken
A still small voice within me points
To the word of God once spoken

That still small voice which speaks so clear
boldly defies void’s power to rend
and proclaims to deepest darkness
Your time will have an end

Breaking forth upon the world
I feel the warmth of truth’s embrace
The red bud flowers upon the tree
Light shines upon our face

A slow reverse to history’s tide
A yearning finally quenched
From heaven’s realms of glory
In green hope earth is drenched

In rays of luminescence find
The hope of every human heart
In the coming of the Prince divine
He has made a wondrous start

To the blood and to the tree
The empty tomb and ascension look
Inaugurating death’s own decay
Written and sealed within in a book

My heart now knows and mind confirms
The truth of what’s to come
I trust His power to renew
Because of what He’s done

The brokenness around us
And the deadness that’s within
Will never tear asunder
What’s been won by Him