Calvary painted love's picture for me.

This is the second of this week's poetry challenges.  We are up and running and I am glad, as it pushes me to keep writing.  Hope you enjoy.

 

FORGIVENESS

 

Seventy times seven, forgive in one day

Is what the Good Book says, as I read in dismay?

How about the times, trodden underfoot?

Aching, humiliated, not knowing where I stood?

My heart feeling as though it were torn into shreds

Tossing and turning at night in my bed.

When words spoken kindly were turned as a snare

To tear me asunder and leave me as bare.

Stricken and naked for each one to see

The bruised sense of self, a nonentity.

 

I turn over pages of the same book and look,

See I was not the only one they’d forsook.

Beaten and battered and gashed in his side

An innocent man for me, crucified

He spoke and they twisted the words that he said

Nailed to a cross until he was dead.

He took it upon him, me to forgive

Yet raised after three days and evermore lives.

 

How much more should I forgive my foes?

For in freeing me, my spirit lets go;

Instead of downtrodden, heavy inside

I now have lightness that nothing can hide.