Holy Ground by Becky Allender
Holy Ground
by Becky Allender
(grandmother, mother, lover of Jesus, co-founder of The Allender Center, facilitates groups for Story Workshops and for the Certificate in Narrative Focused Trauma Care Level 1, Prayer Ministry Coordinator for The Allender Center, author, and dear friend)
Holy ground, where are you now?
The place Jesus stood before the High Priest…
Do you still remember?
Where are you, dirt, which the soldier stood upon and leaped to strike his face when he refused to answer Caiaphas?
What did you feel?
Pungent soil, where he was blindfolded, mocked and taunted,
Spat upon, stripped naked and scourged.
How did you hold his blood?
Though Jews had an ancient law prohibiting no more than forty lashes…
A Roman soldier held the whip-wielding, unleashed fury from hell.
Did you quake with the horror of this violence on your watch?
Holy dirt, where Jesus spent a sleepless night,
Battered, bruised and dehydrated, did you feel his dripping blood?
Did your cool surface calm his bloody body?
What horrific ground you were under Pontius Pilate and haunted ground of Herod Antipas the Tetrarch.
Back, once more, to Pilate to trade Barabbas for the broken Savior.
Did you quake at the horror, the screams and the cries of the crowds?
Holy muck, did you see him stripped naked and anally violated?
You, the stage, where his hands and feet were pounded with nails four and a half inches long, do you still remember?
Did you anoint yourself with his blood?
Dark Golgotha soil, you received the cross of Jesus crucified.
Were you horrified?
As his body gave way to asphyxiation, shock, sepsis, and a spear daggered into his side and blood poured out;
How did you bear this scene? This witness of death, are you still stained today?
And rain-soaked, tear sodden mud, did you hold his mother and friends?
How did you stay when everyone else left? How much blood remains soaked in you?
Is this why you quaked, dearest earth, at the hallowed death of your Lord?
Holy mire, what did you see when dead Jesus descended into hell?
What was the cost of Jesus taking back every key? Did you see that?
Hallowed earth, I wish you could speak, for you, too, bore a great cost.