David’s Surrender Emily A. Ransom, PhD I wrote this Italian sonnet as I transitioned from the urban ministry of my young adult years, where I was beginning to experience severe burnout, to graduate school. The humility to surrender my own particular dreams of vocation, to let others be the ones to do my prior important work, and to follow the path I was being given instead was an immensely formative challenge. Life is too long to be so short, a road Whose length outstrips our wooden soles, and leaves The consummation that our hope achieves Beyond death’s great annulment. Hope will goad Herself to dreams differed and leave the load To Solomon to birth what she conceives,1 The temple where he doesn’t worship,2 sheaves That bow to reapers who had never sowed.3 The grace to finite feet is that they are, The whisper Moses weeps to meet: “Rest here. Give Joshua your staff, for Canaan’s far More costly than a prophet’s tear.”4 The kingdom’s like a planted seed,5 and we Find grace in dust of our mortality. March 18, 2007
2 Samuel 7. 1 Kings 11:7–8. 3 John 4:37–38. 4 Deuteronomy 34:1–6. 5 Matthew 13:31–32. 1 2
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