Holy Inhabitance | Whitney Rivera

Holy Inhabitance

Whitney Rivera

Trembling in the throne room of The Most High, wondrous King Encircled by the holy ones who hallow Your will And hide their faces under burnished wings

Who can stand Amidst the fire and smoke? The revel-racked train of Your wending robe? That surges across the sapphire sea Of firmament glass, where sabbaths Your star-trodden feet And burns its path to the undoing of me

The pious and riotous pounding What sounding! Of praise, and of pinions, And prayers of droves; Wine-dark utterings of old, Hidden kennings of secret things cellared To be found in Your glory-steeped trove.

And the fresh, silvered smolder-glow Curling and whorling its scent; Hot, holy coals. Redolent still of the best man can rend with his eyes: The pleasing aroma of resin-crushed pride, Grief-wrung poverty You will not despise. I should be slain. Bones licked by the flames, soul sundered awry from His presence A foundling of wrath and of shame. I, like Abraham’s Isaac, (Your friend’s One and Only) Fumble up the hill, wood on my frame.

Too feeble to tread, too finite to bear the glorious heft of The Name Your eyes saw the death knell due Duly earning true Justice And for us On the Mount was provided the same

Pleased to wrap me round, spangled down, enrobed in gleaming whiteI can boldly stand by faith among the Council Arrayed in righteousness by Your One and Only Son,

Jesus Christ

“Holy Inhabitance” is winner of the Edgar Creative Writing Prize, awarded annually at Westminster.

Whitney Rivera is enrolled in the Masters of Divinity program at Westminster. She lives on the windswept plains of Nebraska with her husband Elliot and their nine children. She enjoys spending time with her family, tasting God’s goodness through good food and drink, and magnifying the truth of scripture through art.