Open for Business

It’s all stretched out,
this giving:
the open hands,
the empty palms,
arms raised in surrender.
I don’t give once, walk away
and say:
Now I have given and
It is finished.
The open is stationary
a 24 hour mini-mart,
remaining fixed in time
but perhaps never fixed in space.
And so I wear a sign:
We never close.
A reminder that even if there are
locks on the door,
open for business all day, every day,
means all day, every day.

And was His giving the same?
It remains, transfixed, once and for all,
but is it as if even this day He must say:
Not my will?
Are His eternal, always and forever hours of business posted
with the slogan:
Still emptying Myself,
and, after all these years,
still taking on the form of a servant.
Is His giving
stretched out like His body?
True Love self-donated:
open hands,
empty palms,
arms raised in surrender.
Because this is a love that cannot close
Whose giving does not end,
Laying down my life for my friends.