| Bishop's CornerA
Lament for Central America
By Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker
 Last month
Melba and I joined bishops from Angola, Europe and the United States on
a mission tour of Cuba, El Salvador and Honduras. At the Five-day
Academy of Spiritual Formation March 4-8 Melba wrote the following psalm
of lament for El Salvador and Honduras.
A Psalm for Central America
By Melba Whitaker
O God, how your land suffers.
The beauty of creation is hidden beneath the dust of sin.
Rivers run with the blood of your children.
Mountainsides have lost their trees to weed.
Floods rip homes from their tenuous foundations.
Yet water for your people is foul.
Darkness overshadows the lights of cities.
Only the birds of the air can fly high enough to sing your praises.
O God, how your people suffer.
The spark of life is shattered by despair.
Laws of the land oppress and create injustice.
Your children are denied education so
they are bound by the urgency of
scraping
for daily food.
Voices are silenced in fear of undeserved punishment.
Your lands are filled with shadows of
Your image clamoring for life.
They cry to you, "Show your face, God.
Come down where we can see You and feel your presence!
Why is life so hard?
How long must we suffer at the hands of your enemies?"
God weeps for his children.
His tears baptize ground of a new church,
There on the barren mountainside encircling the city
amidst thousands of hovels sheltering
the poorest of the poor,
There is where misery meets mercy.
Children gather and sing, "Holy is your name."
Voices are lifted in praise of the One who suffered
on His cross
as they suffer on their cross.
There, in the absence of all worldly wealth,
in the narrow, mean streets where cries
of anguish fill the night,
There, a woman sings, pure and lovely,
"It is well with my soul."
There God is, in all His beauty, splendor and love.
There, where misery meets mercy and creates Hope.
|
