“What You Refuse To See”

I stood at the edge of the battlefield,
but it was not a field
it was a city,
a schoolyard,
a hospital,
a hunger-line wrapped in barbed wire.

The smoke rose like incense,
but it did not carry prayers
only the stench of gunpowder and grief.
And I heard the Lord cry,
“Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is no room left…”
(Isaiah 5:8)

I opened my mouth,
but it was not my voice that spoke
it was the wind through the torn limbs of children
buried beneath the rubble you call freedom.

I walked through your drone-lit deserts,
where the sun never sets on your violence.
I saw satellites turn to serpents,
and tanks slither like beasts from Revelation
each bearing the mark of a flag
that forgot the face of God.

I saw generals feasting
not on bread, but on bones.
They passed chalices of profit,
drinking deep from the blood of conscripts
who kissed their babies goodbye
to fight wars they didn’t choose.

And the Lord thundered:
“You have sown the wind,
you shall reap the whirlwind!”
(Hosea 8:7)

O rulers, I saw your missiles
etched with verses you do not live.
I saw your war rooms lit with candles,
but no light reached your hearts.
You bend knee in prayer
as your hands press the launch.

You call down fire,
and dare call it holy.
But I say to you:
The God of the burning bush
does not dwell in your infernos.

I beheld your towers
those glass altars of greed
and I watched them shatter
when the breath of the widow rose in judgment.

I heard the psalmist weep:
“They crush your people, O Lord,
and oppress your inheritance;
they slay the widow and the stranger,
they murder the fatherless.”
(Psalm 94:5-6)

And then,
in a field of craters,
I saw a single child stand
shoeless, dust-covered, holding no flag.
And a voice like many waters whispered:
“From such as these
comes the kingdom.”

And I, trembling, asked the Lord:
“Who shall ascend your holy hill?”

And the Lord replied,
“Not those who build empires with the bones of the poor,
but those who bear peace like wounds.
Not those who hold power with clenched fists,
but those who empty their hands to heal.”
(Micah 6:8)

I saw the end of the empire.
Not with an explosion,
but with a cry.
A final trumpet
not of triumph,
but truth.

Babylon fell again.
Not in some ancient ruin,
but in a boardroom in D.C.,
a palace in Moscow,
a bunker in Tel Aviv,
a parliament in Tehran.

And in the silence that followed,
the meek began to sing.

Rev. Allison Burns-LaGreca+
www.ThoughtsPrayersAndArt.com