Lenten Prayers: John 4:9-38

Turn these stones into bread, he said,
blowing the sweet perfume of a warm loaf
across your sunken face, forty nights ravaged
to gauntness and lit by a steelish hope. 

And though your stomach curled into a growl,
you knew that bread alone is never enough,
humankind’s most ferocious hunger the hollow
that gnaws in our souls, that longing that groans

for a word like a breath from beyond ourselves,
for a word like honeycomb, like manna,
for a word like my, like beloved, like son,
for a word from God whose name is love.