Into the heart of the Infinite can a mere mortal hope to gain access,

what with no part of me geared to His greatness,

to His vastness my infinite less?

Yet the longing for Him was so wide and so deep,

by day it crowded life’s thronging,

by night it invaded my sleep.

Then came the pain:

again …

and again …

and again …

As if a wing tip were brushing the tears from my face

for the breath of a second I knew the unknowable,

glimpsed invisible grace.

 

And I lay where for long in despair I had lain;

entered, unshod, the holy There where God dwells with His pain—

alone with the pain of the price He had paid

in giving His Son for a world gone astray

—the world He had made.

My heart lay in silence,

worshiped in silence;

and questioned no more.

 

Taken by permission and adapted from “Ruth Bell Graham’s Selected Poems,” by Ruth Bell Graham. ©1977, 1992, 1997 The Ruth Bell Graham Literary Trust.