Writers 
I used to keep a ledger with God,
a tally of what I've been giving and getting,
how many nights of prayer and tears,
I kept slogging my soul to see some fruits to equal the sum.
But grace is not a ledger and does not need,
to first ask what he has to give you,
before it lays a feast before your plate.
It does not look at your ledger to decide,
how much of your debt it will forgive you for,
but rather gives you more than you have earned,
and makes you feel ashamed for keeping the books.
I think of the laborers in the vineyard,
who toiled in the scorching sun of the eleventh hour,
and still went home with a pittance equal to a days work,
for the master was a wastrel,
who delighted in giving more than the ledger said he should.
For most of my life I've been in the business of keeping accounts
with heaven, doled out mercy in precise aliquots,
shy of asking for more than I rightly anticipated.
Father teach me to stop balancing this ledger,
for I know your love was never meant to be paid back,
not even in some distant deferred installments,
but given freely before any merit could be mustered,
by my soul to repay even the smallest fraction.
Let me stop haggling with your grace,
and let me be a child who gets his trophies,
not by keeping books but being given them,
grateful not for what I have earned,
but what I simply receive,
and then pass on to someone else,
who is busy counting coins at a gate,
you say is always open.
