Covenant

THE BETTER COVENANT

Apr 21, 2019

Written on the anniversary of anniversaries,
Easter Sunday

It’s about seven years ago
Recorded in Genesis Fifteen
That I got a mighty message
About Abram and his dream

Our God was planning a covenant
They had Abram in their sights
Including also all of us
Creating new God-given rights

An heifer, a goat and a ram
Were brought forth to set the deal
God had instructed Abram
To prepare them for the seal

The seal has such a history
It’s overwhelmingly tough stuff
Our God and Our God made the deal
With never the thought of a bluff

I expect most know of the Bible
Some don’t care much what it says
Now mostly dismissed by the culture
It’s so rarely given much praise

Hold up, this may knock your socks off,
But, if you’re already on bare feet
It’s time to put your best socks on
And prepare for this ghastly treat

Some background here is helpful
Back then, thousands of years ago
When young kids prepared for marriage
It was Dads time; time for the Dad’s show

A warning now is relevant
Specially if you hate all gory stuff
And when it comes to covenants
You’re not dealing here with fluff

Marriage vows are serious
Often more so for the in-laws
While both Dads are the enforcers
It’s the insurance that’s the be-cause

Enter the blood path covenant
The key tool of their insurance
It’s that ‘big-pledge’ extraordinaire
Their ‘all-relatives’ assurance

Just as Abram was instructed
The Dads also need an heifer
They then will need to divide it
That’s one half against the other

What’s that mean:

Cut in half
‘A Separation’
Let blood flow
In the middle
Make a path
Just for Dads
-This ain’t no
tarradiddle

Are we now fully prepared?
For todays before-marriage deal?
Roll call – Dads ready, time to go
It’s now seal time, time to get real

Dads, both your shoes and your socks off
Grooms Dad, it’s your place to go first
Go now – walk – through the path of blood
Make this pledge now or you’ll be cursed

‘Now if my son dishonours you
By dishonouring your daughter
Then I will do this to myself
In two halves myself I’ll slaughter’

Dad two’s turn; he’s now up to bat
No bat, no shoes and no socks!
He’s ready – go – walk through the blood
‘Better I’d be checking my inbox?’

No deal, remember we agreed
For our kids’ future happiness
Thinking ahead – our legacy
Let’s put aside all scrappiness

Dad two then honourably walks through
This enlightened path of pain
Both knowing how the future rests
On this their matching bloodstain

‘If my daughter dishonours you
If she then dishonours your son
I will then do this to myself
I will sever myself undone”

The heaviest of commitments
With the bloodiest covenant
And sealed that day so publicly
An unbreakable loving-grant

Returning now to Abram
Who’s obeying his Triune God
With heifer, goat and ram
Wouldn’t you think he was overawed?

Did Abram really understand
All about a blood path covenant?
Was this the first ever set down?
Creating this big precedent

Do we think that we know it all
Because we’ve all heard the history
That raises a major question
Are you aware that it’s His Story?

Returning to Abram’s day
He so clearly was overcome
Having prepared for something big
A deep sleep does seem so humdrum

Methinks, God had a hand in this!!!
As great darkness fell about him
Abram would learn from His God
Big promises for his offspring

We can debate those promises
From a son and a seed and land
But the whole key – the Covenant
Exclusive from Triune God’s Hand

I spoke about a Triune God
They who reign in highest station
With unique perichoresis
About which, more I’ll now mention

The Three-In-One Relationship
In a perfect communion
All are for One and One for All
Infinite Eternal Union

Wow Lord, I love these words You write
As long as I stay so close to You
And yes, today of all Special Days
To be here and honouring You

And there is nothing redundant
Using the same Word in a rhyme
When You are The Word I’m using
As You’re present all of the time

After that joyful diversion –
I love these unexpected hugs
Let’s get back to The Covenant
Though not yet a subject that tugs?

What Abram saw – spectacular
In the dark when the sun went down
Our Triune God made Covenant
Such a staggering loving Crown

The Covenant was for Abram
Note, Abram no participant
A spectator on the sidelines
Our stand-in recalcitrant

So, what on earth does that all mean
Abram was neither in nor out
Just another unworthy man
And a Covenant breaking lout?

Abram needed a substitute
As a replacement for the deal
To clinch and make it watertight
All set for the Heavenly Seal

Our God in Triune Majesty
Who subs in for us – Mankind’s Champ
Following The Smoking Furnace
With Our Triune God’s Burning Lamp

That’s spectacular as it is
And since God knew mankind would fail
He thus boldly stood in our place
The only ‘He Who Will Prevail’

A Covenant’s a Covenant
But what happens when we all fail
And here’s the thing that is AWSOME
God never intended to bail

So this really is the real deal
Made by I AM, our Loving God
He’ll pay the price for all our sin
No wonder we should all be awed

They after all did design us
In Their image we all are made
Though we failed Them in the garden
Until we got this ‘Big Upgrade’

The awesome upgrade – what They did
In honouring Their Covenant
They arranged all this by Themselves
Our Triune God – True Government

God separated Himself from Himself
So fully and completely on the Cross
Fulfilling the Blood Path Covenant
Ensuring you and me never see loss.

Forty-two verses: six sevens
Saving us when we were all at sixes and sevens
(sometimes verse counting gives a surprise Hug)

Re-looking critically at Genesis 15, God’s promises to Abram were specifically about a son, a seed and a promised land. Our God is in the relationship business – sharing who They are with Their creation, and through that partnership doing things together in the most unique fellowship ever, modeled on Our Triune God Themselves.

Covenants are for keeping – yet Our Triune God knew from the beginning we individually and collectively are unable to do that.

So, these promises are incomplete, you could say meaningless, if that end Goal of partnership and fellowship never takes place. God thus needed a way to overcome our sin, iniquity and rebellion, hence a Covenant excluding us, committing Themselves unequivocally to Their desired outcome.

The incredible fulfillment of this bloody Covenant was God separating Himself from Himself through the shedding of Christ’s Blood on the Cross by which through GRACE and not the Law (where the New Testament uses ‘New Covenant’ repeatedly) available to ALL people, we might accept and be reconciled to The Creator. Bloody marvellous!

I wrestled with this, and still do at times, as I reflect – and it was this struggle that caused me just over a year later – to be led to write again. I have found that The Holy Spirit gets me started writing when I am stuck, allowing the Word to walk me into new understandings. At this point of writing I was using ‘we’ and ‘us’ much more than me and I, in acknowledgement of ‘peeps’, the collective of my human spirit, my soul parts, my heart and body.

OUR RESTORATION

May 13, 2020

Five years ago, or sixty months
The blood path covenant gripped us
More than that it overwhelmed
Grabbing our imagination thus

That One would covenant this way
On our behalf is quite enough
But if we should fail miserably
Their planned result way more than tough

Covenanting with another
Yes, fair and square both have heads up
But substituting for the other
Makes no sense to assume their cup

While surety risk removes all risk
Knowing that the other would fail
Why motivate such suicide?
And we’ve not even touched on scale

Imagine too, a punishment
The other fails, surety jailed
Does that seem excessive fervour?
In whose book is surety hailed?

Here surety is ridiculed
‘Widespreadedly’, majority?
Let us examine this paradox
It’s impact and priority

We needs go back, to middle times
Arranged betrothed both bride and groom
Families comfort to protect
Lest either side remove the bloom

And so, devised a covenant
Of blood path nature as Abraham
An heifer or two cut in half
Their blood a path, no epigram

Seems way out this ‘swearing’ set up
The groom’s dad first and then the bride’s dad
Both implicitly declaring
I’ll halve myself if my kid’s bad

What on earth do you mean by that?
Well, the dads’ pledge to each other
If child proves dishonourable
Severed we’ll be just as the heifer

Each commit to the other dad
Before their children get married
Providing a perfect assurance
Both family honour thus unsullied

Now here’s a wild and wacky thought
If one dad trod the bloody path
Bare footed on behalf of both
His hand – surety? crazy math

Those odds – no taker to be found
Why would he do that anyway
We’ll now explore that crazy thought
And rock your world without delay

It’s why we thought we’d write a book
So engaged by what we’d found
‘Our Separation’ it’s title
we’d be sharing what’s so profound

We mentioned Abraham earlier
The ‘father’ of all the nations
But his dream and all that that meant
Has rocked us to our foundations

In Genesis fifteen verse nine
Abram instructions apposite
Take an heifer, goat and a ram
Divide and lay halves opposite

So that ugliest scene was set
Blood pooling a path in the middle
Between both halves, on either side
What! a barbecue with no griddle?

Oh no, mix not the millenniums
Our God had a plan for Abram
In a dream state he needed be
No time here for this epigram

Serious business on the docket
Planned in Genesis one and one¹
Focus the course of everything
Undo the course of the undone

It’s Covenant time for Abram
Dream video behind his eyes?
A Smoking Furnace first passed by
Then a Burning Lamp, The surprise

They passed between the bloody halves
In Covenant making procession
With such implications you’ll see
But so far what’s your impression?

God makes Covenant with Abram
Father God the Smoking Furnace?
But no Abram participates
As the Burning Lamp took his place

The Burning Lamp is Jesus Christ?
Second member of the Trinity
God in loving substitution
Immaculate Divinity

From the foundation of the world
God’s intended plan didn’t change
Give man a choice, no robots here
Thus so pivotal was this exchange

Can man stick to his commitments?
Much less Covenant with His God
So, His God stood in for mankind
Guaranteeing Covenant shod

And yes, Abram and his nations
Fell often and repeatedly
Unholiness, all kinds of sin
Iniquity, deliberately

Cut off, rejected and divorced
Lost causes, disbarred forever
Hell bound in our own hand-basket
Snagged by our own endeavour

God made man in His own image
Fellowship with Him forever
That’s where the Covenant comes in
To compensate for man’s ‘whatever’

Reconciliation long planned
If man failed to keep Covenant
Righteous Justice must then be weighed
Honouring Blood Path Provident

Remember the pledge in verse ten
Where one dads child’s dishonour
For failure to keep covenant
The result a ghastly horror

So Jesus Christ kept God’s faith intact
Despite the tight bond with His Father
And on the blood shedding wooden Cross
They severed themselves from each other.

¹ See below “In The Beginning:

 בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית … bĕrēʾšît
pronounced … bere-sheet … translated into: ‘in the beginning’

These two long poems look squarely at the Covenant event itself and it’s implications for us God’s people

One day I was stimulated by Dan Duval in considering the actual impact upon the earth itself and earth’s atmosphere by the presence of the Two Members of The Trinity visiting earth and participating in this landmark Covenant Ceremony.

GOD’S PORTAL

Sep 30, 2020

Then the horror of great darkness
‘Fear not Abram I am your shield
And thy exceeding great reward’
God’s monumental plan revealed

Genesis fifteen and verse one
And then speaks God of Abram’s heir
This His promise for all mankind
Abram thoroughly unaware

Obediently he sets the scene
Carcasses opposite each other
Abram tired and so falls asleep
The stage is set for the mother

The Mother of all visitations
Our Triune God visits the earth
A portal needs to be opened
For A Covenant making birth

Imagine the intervention
On our physical time and space
God visiting our dimension
In Their ultimate step of grace

Then the horror of great darkness
Violent clouds surround the Portal
Earth’s atmospherics trembling
Terrorizing all things mortal

Then earths response to Their Presence
To the wormhole They created
Their Path in between the heavens
No moment is more inflated

Daniel¹ further opens our eyes
Reference Ezekiel chapter one
The entrance of God’s Holy Throne
Father God, Spirit and The Son

A whirlwind came out of the north
A great cloud with fire infolding
Brightness and colour from its midst
To us is a great foreboding?

No wonder Abram put in sleep
No man can ever see God’s face
The earth itself was hugely touched
Amazing Grace for the human race

God’s presence in the tabernacle
His moving portal through the wilderness
Column of fire at night, cloud by day
Does this bewilder us more or less?

They came to make this path for us
Abram our representative
The smoking furnace and the burning lamp
Was mankind’s doom preventative

Thank You Lord for opening our eyes
Your Word has so many layers
Thank you for your obedience
Encouraging us to be players

These Covenant words are quite long
Not as long as our God’s patience
They long for each of us to run
It’s time to can our complacence.

In one of Dan Duval’s¹ teachings he dissects the words ‘In the beginning’, Genesis 1:1 at the start of the Old testament.

The foresight God gives us as to His plan’s – right up front, is mind blowing.

IN THE BEGINNING

Jul 7, 2020

This may not be a poem – but it is more than poetic.

Genesis 1 : 1
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. KJV

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית … translated into: ‘in the beginning’

This first Word from the Hebrew aleph-bet:
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית … bĕrēʾšît
pronounced … bere-sheet

‘in the beginning’
says all this below, when taken from the rich meanings given to each letter of the Hebrew aleph-bet contained in the six letter word בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית

Looking at the meaning from deep within the Hebrew ‘we get something along the lines of’¹:

‘the body of the highest,
the ox (referring to Jesus),
was pierced with something sharp
by the destroyer, through the hand,
by which he (died and) established
the finished work on the Cross’¹

… all within the first six letter
Hebrew word in the Bible!

¹ with permission from Dan Duval, Bride Ministries. Another friend … indicated that Jesus likes this!