Proper 21, Year Two, Thursday

[Hosea 5:8-6:6]

That God could be like so grotesque a thing:
"Like a moth to Ephraim, like dry-rot to Judah."
To think of God like that: Something which chews
sin's putrefying rottenness from within,

the stinking softness of our wounds gone septic,
what loathsomeness, what tumorous fleshy growth,
those gross beds of decay. Amid the groans
of dying soldiers and rude battlefield physick,

(before the use of penicillin) those
whose wounds went gangrenous were those which had been
picked clean of maggots-- It seems they had eaten
the infection from the flesh-- but Oh!--

to face such ravenous purifiers,
or else the rot consumes the limb's meat raw
and then-- to face the jerk of the bone-saw,
the staunching-rags, the cauterizing fire!

Perhaps something like love must guide the hand
that slides the blade through skin to lance the boil,
to rend and tear and burn that we may heal,
But God!, our Great Physician: it is hard.