Their Lord was dead; they’d laid Him in the tomb.
The Romans killed their head; now they waited for their doom.
What were they to do now that men had killed their Jesus?
With Him no longer here, who was there to save us?

They’d forgotten His words, what He’d said many times.
He foretold His death – and they’d doubted those lines.
He’d said the Son of Man, would be delivered over,
Be crucified by Gentiles – its truth now made them sober.

 Jesus Knew Redux

(Psalm 22 on the right, response on the left. Style inspired by many poems of Kestrel.)

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? 

Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? 

Of course You knew

You still begged

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest

Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel

Is it enough that Your Father knows?

 In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them

You cut the words and paste them back
So that the law will give you slack.
The Book, unprecious, becomes a Thing
In which you make a paper string
Of men in your image, conformed to your shape.
You never worshipped; now you try to escape.
And in the end the truth will go,
But you don’t care; you already know.

I wrote this about a year and a half ago, and pulled it out a while ago, trying to find something to post on AP. I realized I like it a lot more than I thought  I did. I don't really care for the title - any other ideas?
I have a few more things to post on AP before it closes - I have some more of Nikolai, perhaps a ballad, and the opening of a story I'm writing with Anna.
I do have a Facebook, message me if you'd like to add me and I'll search for you.

God's voice, His word, is Christ--speaking that Will you? that He came to make attainable. Because He died we have the prospect of life--and now He’s always asking: Will you? Will you live? That is the essence of God--that tenderness, that love, that mercy, that strength, that desire. God has given us a choice. He has left it to us, whether we will choose Him and His light. Will we? It’s not the matter of a moment. So many times I have cried aloud a Yes! And yet, that is only true if we continue that Yes, that Amen, every moment of every day of every year in our lives.

(All right, this piece is really long, but it's partly because of the very quickly-flowing way it's written, with often only one word to a line. So please don't be intimidated by its length and give up on it...)

The four Roman soldiers hesitated at the door.
“They’ll never believe us,” one said.
“What choice have we?” asked the second.
“None,” said the leader, in a decided voice. “We shall tell the Chief Priests everything, just as it happened. It is our duty. After that, the matter is out of our hands.”
No less anxious, the others agreed.
A servant came to the door, in answer to their knock. Bent over, with an old face and a white beard, he squinted up at them. “What do you want?” he asked.

“There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.” Most everyone has heard these words before, I suppose. Indeed the statement has become so familiar to us as to make it hard for us to look deeper to grasp their full meaning. If you think a moment you will soon realize the words, and I am sure most of us would agree that, should it ever come to it, we would be willing to die for our friend. Though we can only hope to be given the courage and constancy to really do it.