Ishmael, God heard the pleading cries of Ishmael,

the son of Abraham, exiled with his mother long ago.

 

—-and yet did the mother Hagar begin wearing the black

in mourning for her rejection by the father of her son?

 

Is the burka still a sign of the rejection of Ishmael

because of the jealousy of the Barrenness, Sarah?

 

Do we bear the brunt in the very life of Jerusalem for the

Cain and Abel tradition of the sons of the patriarch?

 

God hears the cry of the thirsty babe in the reeds. God tells Hagar,

 “I will make of him a great nation.”

 

God hears the cries. Abba sent word to Mohammed,

who sought to make his people “People of the Book.”

 

There is no God but Allah, Abba, Yeshua, Ruah,

—-and Mohammed is His prophet.

 

How can we still make Rachel’s children into victims—–

to satisfy the jealousy of laughing Sarah?

 

How can we still kill the people of the book in the name of God?

It is mercy God desires not sacrifices.

 

There is no primacy to God’s love in the way that we see it.

The proof is in God’s hearing the cry of the poor.

 

“I do not love you more than the others;

…your gift is that you know that I love you.”

 

This is my own private revelation from God so many years ago.

This is His truth ———-and I am a prophet of this truth.

 

Dennis McNally, SJ

25 February 2009                                                                                                                   July 2015