The Mercy Rule
Copyright 2006 by Jon Gill

I am most incapable of good
Truth is silenced by my wand’ring will
A heart that should be settled, searching still
For scraps and snacks instead of healthy food
To lighten up my ever-changing mood
I close my coat to numb the conscience chill.

How can we trust our well-intentioned heart
To carry us to where we need to go?
For heart and mind do waver to and fro
Amazing if they e’er succeed to start
And always battling our baser part
We fight the very things we think we know.

The heart of man is rotten to the core
For selfish lusts he lives to glutton’s end
For flesh and eye and pride for life pretend
Satisfaction seems a tight locked door
And groping, gripping, always grabbing more
To wound himself beyond a simple mend.

And try I may to change my basest lures
To pluck away this feather from my cap
But as a deep-stuck maple oozes sap
My heart leaks out the sticky, black impure
With this sickness, is there any cure?
Along this way, where do I find the map?

So where can heart and mind both come to terms,
And not merely agree to disagree?
What can this deadened vessel hope to be
Other than the food for hungry worms?
What rule can override the law stuck firm
And save this dying carcass I call me?

A study of the laws of all things true
Reveals a loophole most have never seen
Or seen but not believed, as some may lean
A mercy rule that pierces my death through
(Though piercing through it was, my Lord, to You)
Your flowing red has made my black dirt green.

In this rule, the Pure stands in my stead
And death is given power over You
Upon a tree, accursed, and skewered nude
Your crown reduced to thorns upon Your head
A spear reveals the Living One is dead:
The somber start to making all things new.

A stone seals up the broken bread entombed
And all creation waits for three dark days
While your deliberate death my debt it pays;
But in that dark and stone-cold solid room
A sub-clause of the Mercy Rule in bloom
For only You can understand Your ways.

The Rule includes life’s total preservation
If ever it was given without blame:
“WHEREAS this Rule requires death and shame
To sin and all who bear its sure damnation,
The blameless carries hope for pure elation
For death falls prey to this Redeemer’s name.”

And so I thank my Lord for His supplying
And confess that I have often been a fool
But now I pledge to be His loyal tool
To show the fruitless souls fervently trying
To change their hearts, but ultimately dying
About the Love, the Life – the Mercy Rule.


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