Help me choose adoration
over understanding
when confronted with You.
Simply for the act of bowing
and offering
sages and elders once wandered
two years after a star.
They must have felt how often we deride
the pilgrimage of unknown destination
the dream-directed
the senseless offering of too much costly perfume.
Perhaps their honor
gave many more gifts:
star-sight to all whose paths they crossed
broader vision to their waiting homeland
courage to two faltering parents
who would soon take a dream-journey of their own.
Perhaps they returned
wider inside
ready with laughter
repented from saying, “I would never.”
Perhaps they never forgot
the way the morning star rose
in a blaze of crescent light
above them all.
Jenna Funkhouser is a multi-genre writer with published work in faith-based publications such as Voices of Justice as well as on her website, Downwind of Grace. Her first collection of poetry, Pilgrims I Have Been, was published October 2020. She sees her role as a poet as tracing the quiet workings of grace and is especially influenced by sacramental imagery and thought.