LISS S.

Deliver Me, O Lord

- Poetry by Liss S. |  Published by March 9, 2026

Deliver me, O Lord, from hands that grip

With poison where they touch,

From mouths that speak in honey

But mean nothing good as such.

From those who wear the cloak of peace

Yet sharpen stones within,

Whose eyes are full of restless war

Beneath a polished grin.

With two hands they serve You, Lord,

They lift them high in praise—

Yet with their very presence, God,

They swallow others' days.

They make the seen feel invisible,

The living feel like air,

A ghost inside a crowded room

That no one stops to spare.

I am a sparrow in a net

Of thorns I did not weave—

O God of Jacob, God of Abraham,

Reach down and make me leave.

You parted seas.

You stilled the storm.

You walked on restless waves.

Surely You can lift me out

From pestilent, darkened days.

Let my feet find solid ground

Where mercy still has room,

Where those who gather do not come

To strip me like a tomb.

Be my wall, be my refuge,

Be the door that opens wide—

Lead me out from hands of wickedness

And keep me by Your side.

So here I lay my burden down

At the altar of Your Name—

Not in the hands of holy men,

But Yours, from Whom I came.

You knew me before the temple stood,

Before the prayers were said—

Receive me, Lord, not as they left me,

But as You made me instead.

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This poem is a cry from the wilderness of religious spaces gone wrong. It is not a cry against God — it is a cry to God, from someone who has sat inside rooms full of lifted hands and left feeling more alone than when they entered. Religion is a performance and ritual. Some are idolatry — others are even worse. The idol worshipper at least knows they are reaching for something beyond themselves. The religious performer has stopped reaching altogether, satisfied with the costume, the appearance, the solemn assembly. Scripture itself is the loudest voice against this. Isaiah 1 records God saying He cannot endure the appointed feasts — and He was not addressing pagans. He was addressing His own people, in the temple, doing everything correctly. Jesus reserved His most devastating words not for prostitutes and tax collectors but for the religious — whitewashed tombs, clean on the outside, full of dead men's bones.

 

The line "With two hands they serve You, Lord, They lift them high in praise — Yet with their very presence, God, They swallow others' days" is not merely poetic observation. It stands in the prophetic tradition of Amos, Isaiah, and Micah — those who watched the widow be made invisible while the offering plate passed by full and gleaming. True worship, leitourgia, the work of the people before God, was never designed to be theater. It was meant to transform the one who offers it. When it stops transforming, it becomes costume.

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And this poem is a prayer that God Himself — not religion, not ritual, not the approval of holy men — would reach down, past all the performance, and bring His child safely home.

Amen.

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Be Yourself?  - a poem by artist Liss S. published by March 9, 2026

As I sit here writing,

Let me be a child again—

No armor, no performance,

No carefully managed pain.

​

Because adulthood is the art

Of masks on top of masks,

Of answering I'm fine

Before anyone even asks.

Because adulthood is the art
Not mere hypocrisy, but:
The slow forgetting of your own face,
The practiced burial of your voice,
The daily death of what you felt
Before the world removed your choice.

I do not love you. I do not like you either.

And you, behind your careful face,

Are no more a believer

Than I am, in this moment—

We are two masked strangers here,

Passing pleasantries like currency,

Too proud to be sincere.

Even sinners love their sinners, Even wolves run with their pack—

But you and I have something worse:

A cold and courteous act.

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We have not looked into the mirror,

The one that shows the truth—

The face of Jesus, bright and burning,

The unbearable proof

That we are not what we perform,

That we are not what we wear,

That somewhere underneath the masks Is someone beyond repair—

Without Him.

He is angry with us. Not the anger of the small,

But the grief of One who made us

And watched us build this wall

Of manners, rituals, performances,

Of smiles we do not mean—

While He stands at the door still knocking,

Still patient, still unseen

By eyes too busy managing

The masks we show the crowd.

We have not received Him, you and I.

We have only been loud

In all the wrong directions,

Toward everyone but Him—

And Hades is not fire and brimstone first,

It is living at the brim

Of everything He offered,

And choosing, every day, The mask instead of the mirror,

The performance instead of the Way.

So here, as a child, not an adult,

I lay the clever words aside—

Lord, I have not received You fully. I have mostly just performed. And lied.

Receive me now. Unmasked. Undone. Unpolished. Real.

The child that never left, still here—

Waiting to finally kneel.

"He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him." — John 1:11