To Live In the Law
by Michael Doyle

Walked into the doctrines of controversy
There is a stiff challenge without heresy
Down through God's good ages
There are debates that readily rage

The dialog should be had with all humility
Gracefully admitting a bit of grace and mercy
It's universal and filled with shades of glory
But it isn't our story, but God's story

Martin Luther found and fought his contradictions
That reformed and rejected the Church's direction
We evolve or don't in our failed understanding
And realize our context has been demanding

Filters and perceptions require adjustment
We need to allow grace to be our measurement
We're under the law as long as we live
But the world requires we learn to forgive

It is said that Christ died that we might bear fruit
Despite the sins that lay at our rotted root
It takes a pause of discernment to decide
The best of our learning to keep in our stride

Our inner conscience brings us to understanding's door
We need to lean in to learn all the more
Legalisms can break our mortal hearts
If we don't move on beyond our troubled start

We strain there at the bonds of law and liberation 
The twisted metaphor of marriage pulls the imagination
To find that the widow's first husband was stern
And unable to meet expectations, she did learn

To lean on the ways of humility and to be content with grace
The death of the old ways became a doorway to embrace
The past is severed so that a new path can be found to walk
God's mystic breath is had so that the pastor can talk

Fertile faith replaces barren obedience, unreached
It becomes fruit that blossoms with the love He preached
The conflict of identity breaches from the old patterns
Finding forgiveness in our escape from the death of sins

Stilted religion is replaced with our right relationship
With the risen one with whom we commune and worship
Like the widow renewed, we find ourselves in new emotion
Giving up ritual and impossible laws replaced with devotion

(c) March 30, 2025   Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved