Here’s a poem I wrote about Achan. He was a man in the old testament (Joshua 7) that buried the treasure from Jericho instead of destroying it, ultimately leading to turmoil for the Jews…eventually they stoned him and his family. Pretty brutal! But, I wrote this poem from our standpoint today, that we have Christ now who loves us despite the sin in our lives, despite our own “treasure” we like to hold onto.

I hid that treasure beyond your reach,
Or so I thought.
Deep within my chest I hid it with long lies
That walk circles around your ears
And chase your thoughts from the question
“What have you done?”
Or so I thought.
I hid it for my lusting eyes.
I hid it for my salivating, greedy palms,
For my destructive passion,
For my angry dissatisfaction,
Rotting sanity,
And sinking identity.
And as my legs submerge lower under my own fears,
As my knees buckle under the weight of this pride,
I cling tighter to what I hid
Because letting go would be admitting something,
But I don’t know what that is yet.
It would be easier to let you in behind these bars,
I would breathe you in 
And light would soak into the wounds.
The darkness would be confused
And would flee from my lungs.
It would cry out of my ears,
Leap from my shoulders
And fall from eyelashes.
My knees would be relieved from their shaking,
And my mouth from this thirst.
Then my mind from behind my eyes,
My heart from behind my chest,
Would leak out from the binding, drowning, suffocating 
Lies I tied around them
And I would find rest.
But, I can’t get enough breath.
I can’t get enough strength
So I can’t get enough courage
To simply put the air behind vocal chords
To whisper out the words of what I’ve done.
So there you stare,
Refusing to leave.
Your shadow kissing your feet
As you stand in the insults I left piled around your ankles
That I rehearse into the crying mirrored image at night.
And here I stand, 
Slowly dying,
My soul shaking in the skin of my starving desire for simply
No more fear.
I hid that treasure beyond your reach,
Or so I thought.
But you still found a way to love this mess,
Again.