There was no hope for my reformation.
Nothing on which to built restoration.
My problem of me could only be solved by
starting all over again . . . brand new.

So I am not patched up and corrected.
The cracked and leaking vessel is
cast aside . . . utterly!
A new lump of clay is thrown upon the wheel
and a being - fresh and new - is
spun and shaped for His pleasure.
A creation of His brilliance . . .
and not my limitation.
A surprise, a delight, a life I will love to live. 

A new person, someone I don't know and won't recognize
but who is - at once familiar, a lost dream,
a forgotten vision.
I fit into this creation and this being fits into me
by a perfection of design, divine in origin.

I am a "new" creation.
In the Hebrew, "new" is a word of wonder.
It means something new that has never been.

But my faith can be so cemented in the old rag
that I believe in the "new person" only as
some impossible ideal only realized in eternity . . .
well, maybe. 

But my God says of me, that I am a new creation.
Now.

So I wait and watch in wonder for Him
to free "her" of me, who
oppresses and restrains that foreign creature,
spiritual by very nature,
true citizen of a Different Culture
Who is able to live in Another Realm
while normal here.

This "new" one I will not be able to define
and predict . . . or ever fathom.
The old Adam knows one rut
of boring repetition.
The new person is a mystery unfolding
through a prayer-filled
knowledge of its Creator. 

I am new. Now original, where before
I was the same as all others:
self-loving, self-willing,
self-worshiping.

I am His delightful dream, dreamt
before the world was formed.
A dream I soiled but could not spoil.

He nourished His idea of me
and never let it go.
He put away the 'old and wretched me'
by the cleansing grave I
shared with Him . . .

"I have been crucified with Christ
       and I no longer live,
       Yet not I but Christ liveth in me . . .
       And the life I now live I live by faith
       in the Son of God who loved me
       and gave Himself for me."

Christ has fused Himself into this
common shell, His original image.

And by His presence IN me and
dominion OVER me, I become my real self,
a person complete only because of Him,
by disappearing into Him.

The very greatest mystery, never understood . . .
merely lived . . . by faith.

He said I am new.
I am new.

Copyright © 1999 Martha Blaney Kilpatrick