Bleeding Love – A Heart Refined By Fire
A Poem, By Joy Aletheia Stevens
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God, here I am before you tonight,
Holding out a heart, wounded, but contrite.
A heart that bleeds its blood of love,
I lay it before You, God above.
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It’s been wounded deeply,
But was not treated cheaply.
And I let it be wounded, I know.
I even let these wounds grow.
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It was crushed Lord, but that’s ok.
And Lord I loved the crushing, each and every day.
It crushed and bled, and bled out love.
It wouldn’t stop this flow of love.
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It was beaten like a rug on a line,
Beating out the dust of time.
It was burned like crystal pure glass,
It was melted till pure, like the finest brass.
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Oh Lord! It was cut, like the finest gems.
Oh God! It was crushed, chaff blown to the winds.
It was squeezed till impurities flowed out.
The linin was clean, the pain made me shout.
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It was bruised like a roses petal.
It was melted like the finest metal.
I cried I wept with the crushing of,
This little heart, and it only bled out love.
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I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36:26
I know that many might not understand this poem. It sounds strange, talking about pain of the heart in a positive light. But so often I’ve found that it is through pain that we are refined. That is what this poem is talking about, the refining of a heart. And yes, sometimes it is a very painful process, but in going through what life throws at us, with eyes on Him and a trusting heart, He’ll uncover beauty we never knew.
Joy Aletheia Stevens
Photo Credit: Anniversary Rose by Ginny (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Another excellent and thoughtful prose. When God molds and shapes, its rarely painless. As pain brings attention to physical pain that needs to be corrected. Pain from the heart reveals that there may be attitudes, emotions, or trust issues that causing us more pain than we think. Thank you, Lord, for pain and discomfort.
It is an interesting perspective isn’t it? And one we tend to rebel against. That God can and does work through pain in our lives to refine us. Growing pains are necessary to reaching and growing into all God wants for us, but so often we just doesn’t understand this process. We sit around and question why we are going through whatever we are going through, feeling abandoned by God, and betrayed. In fact so often it is in those points of pain we have the most opportunity for victory.
Like this very thought provoking
Thanks! 🙂
Love it! Oh how I wish I could write poetry!
Thanks so much!
What a beautiful poem. Thank you for this new perspective on a hearts pain. I know as a mother there will be many times in the future that I am wounded, but I need to remember that God is shaping me into the best mother I can be.
One of the things about love is that in order to truly love you must make yourself vulnerable to pain. It’s why love can be so hard at times, because let’s face it, we’re imperfect people and we will hurt each other. 🙂