Today, the Lighthouse team continued their book study of ‘The Wood Between the Worlds: A Poetic Theology of the Cross.’ After discussing a chapter about Jesus’ descent into the abode of the dead, we gathered around a stone cross—the Leeds Cross in Leeds Minster, a relic nearly a thousand years old—and in liturgical worship, we spoke the words of an ancient Christian poem about Jesus the Victor, releasing captives from the grave.

It was holy ground, a thin space.
Tonight, I sat down and wrote my own poem, ‘The Harrowing of Hell.’
A whisper once stirred in the silence of Sheol,
a breath of light cut through the darkness,
green shoots in the land of murky shadows.
Hell once knew only stillness,
shadowed halls where names were lost,
chains spun from sorrow and decree.
No footstep had ever come
to set the prisoners free.
No one makes it out of here alive,
Yet.
Chains trembled,
shackles shook.
The beast recoiled,
and the veil, spun of sadness and sorrow,
rent.
The crucified God-Man
stood—
Love and mercy entwined,
eyes burning with the fire before dawn.
The silence would now be shattered.
The first awoke—
Earthling and Lifegiver,
Then,
kings and prophets,
young and old,
beggars and exiles,
Those battered and bruised by the storms of life.
These bones may yet live.
Light rushed in,
darkness unmade.
The gates,
the ancient gates,
were opened.
Who is this King of Glory?
Love had won.
Love will win.
And death will be no more.
And as tears are wiped away,
Sheol will know its end.
- Swales, 2025

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