Rescue Us, Father

What follows is a Father's Day poem I wrote in the spring of 2003. In March, the U.S. had invaded Iraq and my son Peter was at the point of the invasion with the 3/7 Marines. We only knew of his location by reading the reports online from the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" who had a reporter and a photographer embedded with the 3rd Marines.

At the same time as the invasion, I was in the middle of writing a series of daily devotions for Christ In Our Home and the text for the day was Isaiah 43:

But now thus says the LORD,
he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the LORD your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

Rescue Us
We await the homecoming of our son from war. He is a Marine,
Weapons company, boots on the ground, tip of the spear, target.
Forty nights and days and more from March through April and into May
We heard no word, no delay of distant voice, no letters, no sound.
Was he brave? Was he lost in the fog of war, frightened?
Was he the reason or comforter of the dying
    whose faces we did not see.
What we knew we gleaned only from electronic images,
   sleepless dreams,
And each day’s sad hope sustained from no somber Marine at our door.

Isaiah sang his song to his people exiled in that far country—
   exotic and prodigal.
He sang his promises to a people
    terrified by the same inflamed spirits—
Hot winds from sacred fires threatening to consume
    the air they breathed,
Hardened metals hurled like lightning through swirling red sand skies,
Dervishes, spinning, exploding up from hidden places none could see,
All threatening to conceal with soot and blood the very face of God.

On many days during the waiting, I read aloud Isaiah’s spirit song.
I read it for myself. I read it for my son and those who fought.
I read it for all caught in the cross-fire of our precision terror. Then,
Tears dropped on the page as witnesses to a father’s heartache.
God’s heart aches for the homecoming of his children. Now,
I know in such times there is nothing a father hopes for more.
They will come. They will come home singing. Redeemed.

My heart still aches for the 4,500 who have not yet come home and the fathers who still wait for their children.