Sometimes you have to answer back to God.

Sometimes

you have to answer back to God.

Many consider it poor form,

say that we have no right

to question the Divine opinion.

We are mere worms, they say;

who are we to presume to know better

than the Omniscient One

whose ways are mysterious?

Better to put the doubts aside

and accept the Almighty’s

strange wisdom. Remember Job

and his unsuccessful contention?

Yes, but I am reckless enough

to doubt, curious enough

to question, and rude enough

to answer back.

There is much in this world

with which I disagree,

and God, they tell me,

is supposed to be in charge.

It seems to me that faith

requires me to keep asking;

a pesky dog yapping at God’s heels:

like the woman in the story

who would not let go until Jesus

changed his mind

and healed a gentile daughter.

© Ken Rookes

Cur Deus Homo*

Seeking respite from the crowds,

the God-man heads north on a holiday

to gentile-land, Tyre to be precise.

He covers his tracks well,

the paparazzi will not find him.

But the do-not-disturb sign

is treated with nonchalant indifference,

by a foreign woman

who apparently fears neither God

nor man.

Her daughter is crook,

with a demon, to be specific.

She asks the God-man

to drive the demon out,

to set her daughter free.

He refuses, saying

that gentile-dogs can go beg

whilst Israel's children first be fed.

But the woman is rude,

she doesn't know the rules, and answers back.

The God-man accepts

the shame of being wrong.

He lets the woman have the last word,

and does the right thing,

in the end.

*Cur Deus Homo was the title of a famous essay

by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109).

In English it means "Why God became a man."

© Ken Rookes