All the things our hands have built
Are proven less than tinder
When God's own flame has come to clean our houses;
We stand among the ashes
And glance into our past
Where we find ourselves so confident and eager.So much that we claim to know
Turns out to be a mere hint of reality,
A whisper of the truth;
So sure we know what's real,
We only see the shadows of it,
The outline of a blurry silhouette.
We labor to paint a portrait of God,
So exact and tidy,
Every detail well endowed with our affection.
But stepping back to drink it in
We gaze in our astonishment
To find our own faces painted on the canvas.
And then another piece of our reality
Comes rushing to assault us
As we stand without defenses.
The discovery of pretension
Has robbed us of our comfort;
We've created truth in our own image.
Rick Deering
