Waxen Wings

You placed each star.

A thousand years a blink, and a second retards

To a millennium likewise.

Yet the stars, unfixed, can swirl

In poetic motion, like sonnets of the Bard

And catch the eye with a curious whirl,

Or we see only mudpies.

Man has thought hard to make sense of it,

Long believing that they stood in the midst of it.

But only fact could advance reason.

Copernicus came after Dark Age season,

With the sun in the hub of our world-play.

Without Ptolemy's epicycles,

Defended with Galileo's final breath: "E pur si muove."

Human reason, summed up in a line: "Cogito ergo sum" -

Yet "before you thought, I AM" -

His thought, eternal - before you dwelt in womb,

Before Abraham and Adam's eyes consumed

The world around them, in new delight and reverent fear,

His glory shone for many a trillion year.

"Look to your new-found courage, young man,

For that is the way to the stars."

Maybe a man will set foot on Mars,

Maybe reign there like the czars.

"Run farther, faster than the last man ran;

bring back new knowledge in jars.

They will talk of it in bazaars

And hail this new truth as ours.

"Three-score and ten, perhaps five-score

Is all you can give to the knowledge war.

So push the limits well. Achieve."

And time after time, we believe

That our Icarus wings will never melt

As coronal heat meets the wax we felt

Would hold, man's wisdom meets defeat.

Have we ever stood to praise

The God of All, Whose creation is a maze

For our minds to completely understand?

Glory to God that He would ignite curiosity,

That man would try to think at the highest velocity!

But our thoughts can never expand

To the unlimited delight that He takes in all creation,

To His boundless understanding of its innermost details,

To His incalculable power to move each constellation,

To His immeasurable might to create it as He exhales.

To the only wise God whose glory knows no twilight,

To better see Your saving work, move to improve my eyesight,

And save me from the limelight when You know it's only pyrite.

I praise You, all-wise God, because You made me finite!

I do not wish to trade my wings for nicer waxen wings,

Which will melt before Your presence like hay and other things.

Your breath will blow on man's works and destroy

The beauty in the flowers men enjoy,

But Your faithful Word You inspired outlasts

All Your unabashed iconoclasts.

Give me instead a heart with desire

Not to be You, but to love You, heart afire.

Your unsearchable understanding also knew a way to redeem

Me from each oft-wayward thought and dream.

And You remind me best when I lie faint.

In this world, grief and loss You would acquaint,

Far more than mine.

Here, You demonstrate love's sign:

A Savior, winged in glory, dons my waxen wings and dies

For each of my acts in selfish pride,

And by Your grace, Your hand denies

Me no truly good thing, and will one day make me rise

And be clothed and wed, brought with the Lamb to dine.