Alternate title: A bad poem attempting to do what ten pages did not! 

Justification, reconciliation, substitution, payment, victory, sacrifice, ransom, freedom, satisfaction…

Too many words!

Yet not enough.

Words enough to fill books upon books,

Yet still not enough to fully explain the how—

The what, even!

Well, it’s understandable—

Paul himself spoke in metaphor

And mixed them like disparate ingredients in a stew—

Trying to convey the whole with parts—

With the whole being the best meal ever,

Filling, enlivening, comforting…

Hmm, I, too, just used metaphor,

bringing in yet another in an attempt to wrap my mind around

the atonement, that definition-defying word,

the At-One-Ment of those so very much at odds:

God and creation,

Beginning in harmony,

And then not—

With the fault being wholly NOT God’s.

In the great gulf between: sin, death, evil,

Impossible for creation to bridge.

So crossed instead by the injured party,

(Oh, terrible pun–yet true!)

The birth, the life, the death, the resurrection of God-made-flesh,

And the far off was brought near.

At-One-Ment was accomplished!

How?

Through the death of Christ, we say.

But, really, how? How? How did that death make one again what had been so seriously separated into two?

Oh dear,

We resort to metaphors once again,

Each one expressing just a part. Only a part

Of a glorious, beautiful, magnificent whole.

BIG—encompassing all of humanity, past, present, future.

The entirety of creation as well.

Yet small, too.

For I, one among billions, a speck in the universe,

I am At-One with the Holy One.

And you, fellow speck, you can be, too!

Incredible.

He in me. I in him.

He in you. You in him.

We—you, me, we two—AT-ONE as well!

We all—creation days one through six—

At One!

Could there be a more amazing mystery? A mystery worked through mystery!

“For God so loved…”

Ah, the need to understand momentarily set aside,

I rest,

Grateful.