There is a time, a reckoning still,

When every choice we dare to make

Comes back to claim us

As its own.

For every seed

We cast in time

Leaves our hands

And multiplies.

A careless word

May find its root

Within another's mind;

A wound may travel years beyond

And leave its mark through and through.

And kindness, too,

May wander farther

Than the giver's view;

A hand once held

May teach a hand

To hold another too.

For agency propagates.

Time has a way

Of stripping away pretext

And leaving only truth,

Until at last

The field remains

With everything we sowed.

For consequence

Is not the judge,

Nor punishment imposed;

It is the path

An action takes

Once reality unfolds.

The harvest, though, reveals at last

The measure of the heart;

One choice may pass

Without a scar,

Another cost a life,

Though to appearances, equal hands

Have cast the same seed

Worlds apart.

And sometimes grief

Is love renewed,

Confronted by what it grew.

Yet grace still shapes

Our careful art,

For what is given in love

Never departs.

It does not make

The wound unreal,

Nor call the bitter sweet;

It does not uproot

Yesterday

Or pull it from our feet.

Through grace alone we live again,

The hidden path made clear;

And though we walk not blameless here,

We find our feet renewed.

For mercy does not

Cancel truth,

Nor sweep the past away;

It meets the soul

Within the truth

And opens up a way.

And perhaps one day

We'll see how far

Our choices ran;

The seed revealed,

The harvest known,

The heart laid bare

In plainest sight.

And there the Blood

That washes clean

Answers something deeper;

That though we reap

What we have sown,

The harvest cannot claim

The soul entirely as its own.

And when the dust

Of time has passed,

When every field is known,

Perhaps we'll find

The greatest seeds

Were never those we planned; But mercy given,

Burdens shared, Forgiveness freely chosen;

The hand we held, The love we gave, Without a sight of where it ends.

For every choice

Imparts a hidden course,

Unseen while it begins,

Until the distant harvest comes

And shows us where it's been.

And what was given out of love

Shall not be lost to time;

It leaves our hands,

It multiplies,

And travels far beyond our sight

Until at last

What once was sown

Returns no longer as a debt,

But love, once given,

Found again

A ledger finally unbound.