This feeling of mine I can’t explain:
It grips my heart with sadly joy
That nought on earth can e’er destroy –
Urging that I should from sin abstain,
For in my want and in my full –
All over me it dares to rule,
And speaks of that which I should attain.
It reminds me of a distant place,
Of things that were to change my fate
And lead me from my lowly state…
That Someone else in His Love and Grace
Decided instead I be lost,
To Himself He will take the cost
And my death with blissful life replace.
Weep now, my soul, and shed all your tears
Because of what you once had done –
The misery caused the Father’s Son…
Pierced at every side with soldiers’ spears,
Despised and mocked because of you,
Until at last was murdered too:
The blood that was shed your guilt it bears.
To you the Lord has now shown the way:
Strive and redeem your guilt at last.
Don’t think that what you did is past,
Nor follow the world to go astray.
Recall you made the Son to die:
To you this is the reason why
Two thousand years seem like yesterday!
– Victor Emmanuel Uwah, Poems From Without, 1997
