Red
divine blood
shed with love
offering my soul salvation.
Hallelujah!
This short poem is an elfje. I followed the link of a blogger who liked one of my posts, and then followed a link on her site to another blogger who had posted a lesson on how to write this little gem of a poetry form. I decided to give it a try.
With the approach of Lent, I’ve been pondering whether I would give something up this year or add a daily habit as I have done in the past. I thought about blogging every day for Lent, like I did in 2010, but I have a lot going on right now and have been enjoying the freedom of not feeling like I have to post something every day. Then I thought about taking an extended break from blogging, including not checking my blog stats or reading other blogs, so that I would have more time to focus on the new Bible Study Fellowship study I am starting tonight. I was leaning towards the latter option.
Then yesterday in church the sermon was based on Acts 17:16-34 (NIV) about Paul’s missionary efforts in Athens. Verse 17 says “So he [Paul] reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.” I decided then that I would blog every day instead of giving up blogging for Lent.
But still I was concerned about how I was going to accomplish this. Then last night as I was trying to go to sleep a poem started forming in my mind, keeping me awake. I recently placed a small notebook and pen next to my bed to write down poems or other blog ideas so that they would not get lost like the poem that was the subject of a recent poem of mine titled A Poem Lost. So I flipped on the light, scribbled down the beginning and ending of this poem so that I could finish it later (I will be posting it tomorrow). I turned out the light and as I again tried to sleep it occurred to me that I could write a short poem every day for Lent. It will require the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit to accomplish this task, but with His help I can.
So beginning on Wednesday, which is Ash Wednesday and the first day of Lent, I will be posting 40 new poems, one for each day of Lent (not counting Sundays). As Paul did, I will be sharing God’s love day by day as we approach Holy Week and the blessed death and resurrection of Jesus.
One of my favorite authors of all time is C.S. Lewis. The man was brilliant, his arguments logical, and his imagination astounding. I recently returned a book that I got for Christmas, and in its place got three others. (I should only have gotten one, but my husband is so nice and let me get three when I couldn’t decide). One of the three books I got is The Quotable Lewis. I love it because when I come across a Lewis quote I can use this book to determine what book it is from. It contains 600 pages of quotes from Lewis’ many books, all organized by topic kind of like a dictionary.
I was flipping through this book last night, just reading random quotes. I came across one that I wanted to share.
It is clear that there never was a time when nothing existed; otherwise nothing would exist now. Miracles, ch. 11, pg. 88 (1947).
This is a wonderful example of Lewis’ logical reasoning. How would anything exist now if there was nothing in the first place?
This logical argument doesn’t reach the point of determining what or who it is that always existed, but it does lead one to inquire about it. It makes no logical sense to start any inquiry about our universe from the standpoint of nothing becoming something.
Lewis was a very learned man and a prolific reader and writer. He had read and studied all the great philosophers that came before him as well as his contemporaries. During his early adult life he was an atheist, but eventually came to realize that atheism was not a logically tenable position.
No philosophical theory which I have yet come across is a radical improvement on the words of Genesis, that “in the beginning God made Heaven and Earth.” Miracles, ch. 4, pg. 33 (1947).
I am not nearly as well read as Lewis, but I have to agree.
Filed under Book Review, Faith, Jesus, Life
The Meeting at the Bar prompt over at dVerse Poets Pub today is to write about creativity in some way. Host Anne Montgomery asks us “to think about a time when you’ve experienced or championed the immersion of creative flow; the agony, disappointment, or rejuvenation of a creative U-turn; how you incubate new ideas or divergent thinking; or examine creativity as a subject in your poem.” It made me think of the many poems that I’ve lost because I didn’t want to get out of bed and let creativity flow.
A Poem Lost
I lie in bed, curl up for sleep
Eyes closed, blankets pulled tight
Sleep eludes me, I lie awake
Words swirling in my head
There’s a poem forming line by line
The culmination of thoughts of the day
It’s a pretty good one, too
I should get up, write it down
I peak a hand out from under the covers
I’m reminded of how cold it is
Too cold – this poem will have to wait
I will write it down in the morning light
Still the words swirl and form stanzas
Stubbornly I refuse to rise and write
Morning comes
My poem is no more
It is lost in the night
Perhaps it went in search of warmer climes
The hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God gloriously celebrates God's power. It was penned by the great 16th-century reformer Martin Luther, who believed God's power could help believers overcome great difficulties -- even depression. Given his pastoral heart, he sought to bring spiritual counsel to struggling souls. His compassion for those souls shines in numerous places, including his sermons, lectures, Bible commentaries and 'table talks'.
Each year WordPress provides me with an annual report of my blogging activity for the past year. Included in the top five posts of 2012 was an article titled Forgiveness that I wrote for my church newsletter and was the second thing I posted when I started this blog in September 2009. I realized that the subject of forgiveness is timeless and so I decided to write more posts on that topic in 2013. I am starting with this poem about how forgiveness leads to freedom from despair.
Forgiveness Set Me Free to Love
Anger tethered me to the past
holding on strong, holding me back
imprisoned in a dungeon of my own making
Deceived into believing
the walls had been built by another
solid walls I could not escape
Blame fostered thoughts of revenge
of justice for the transgressor
as the Accuser spurred me on
The future seemed a blur
of decades in darkness and woe
with no hope of joy or love
Then through tiny cracks
in the walls of my misery
a light shone, beckoning me escape
The light whispered in the darkness
Forgive and let go
Leave justice to Me
It seemed too simple
and yet to forgive was impossible
without the light to show the way
I could bear the darkness no more
the anger had made me weary
the hatred was draining all life
Trusting the light
I chose to forgive, even the unforgivable
I clung to love instead of hatred
Like the walls of Jericho
the prison of my despair
crumbled and fell at His word
Forgiveness set me free
to live and to love in peace
with hope for my future in view
As this poem began to form in my mind, I thought of the families of the 20 children who were killed in Newtown, Connecticut. These children are now in heaven with Jesus and have no need of lessons on forgiveness. But the families left behind to mourn their loss will need to learn to forgive the troubled young man who perpetrated the evil that took their children away from them.
The natural reaction will be anger and hatred, but unless those feelings give way to forgiveness these families will be trapped in a dungeon of despair. They will need the light and love of God to free them. My prayer for them is that they will be able to trust the Light of Christ to tear down the walls of anger and to ensure true justice prevails.
Last year I wrote an acrostic poem titled Advent, and I have been astounded in the past 4 weeks how many times it has been viewed. The search terms stats on my blog show that a lot of people have been searching for Advent acrostic poems. Since it is a topic of great interest, I decided to write another one. It is quite different from the first but carries the same Great News of hope found in a manger.
ADVENT THANKFULNESS
Angels to the shepherds sing
Divine arrival of the King
Victory is now in sight
Emmanuel comes this night
Need of all mankind is met
Thankful hearts, He paid our debt
Normally on my blog the only really controversial subject I write about is my belief that Jesus is the only way to salvation. It is a subject I feel strongly about and feel led to share about.
There is another controversial subject that I have never written about here, but that has been on my mind a lot lately. In fact having this post rattle around in my head taking up space for the past month is a big part of the reason I took a month off from posting. I have wanted to avoid this subject because no matter how I approaches it, there is bound to be someone who takes offense and reads something into what I’ve written that was not what I intended. It is a subject that is typically “discussed” with sound bites and angry one-liners.
In the end, I’ve decided to write about this subject in terms of my own story as well as adding a bit of a book review in the mix. This controversial subject is abortion.
For much of my life I was strongly pro-choice. I even attended a NARAL rally with my sister in Portland, Oregon many years ago. I was (and still am) a strong proponent of a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her own body, and I believed that making sure a woman could have an abortion any time she chose to was the best way to protect that right.
But then something happened that changed my heart and mind on abortion. My son was five years old at the time and I found out I was pregnant. My husband and I were thrilled because we had been trying to get pregnant with our second child for four years. We were so excited that we told everyone when I was only six-weeks along.
About a week later I started having some spotting so I went to see the nurse practitioner at my doctor’s office. She sent me for an ultrasound. I had never had an ultrasound before except when I was almost nine months along with my son, so I was not really prepared for what I saw. The ultrasound technician pointed out my little baby and his or her heartbeat on the monitor. The baby was very small, but the human shape and the beating heart were unmistakable.
Unfortunately, the ultrasound also revealed that my placenta was tearing away from the uterine wall. I was directed to go home and rest, and I hoped that it would heal and all would be okay. Two days later I had a miscarriage.
In my grief over the loss of this child I cried out to God, but I found comfort in the thought that someday I would meet my little baby in heaven. Suddenly I realized how hypocritical and illogical it was to mourn the loss of this child only seven weeks after his or her conception while simultaneously believing that to abort a child at the same stage of development involved only the mother’s body. I realized that what Dr. Seuss once said through the words of Horton the Elephant was true: “A person’s a person no matter how small.”
Several years later a friend loaned me a book titled Won by Love by Norma McCorvey. It is her autobiography as Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade. She tells the story of how she became the poster child for the pro-choice movement, worked in an abortion clinic, and was ultimately won over by love to the realization that abortion was not a right worth fighting for. Her story is heartbreaking and compelling. In her first-hand recounting of her time working in an abortion clinic, Norma exposes the truth that abortion clinics and doctors were more concerned about their bottom lines than about the health and care of women facing crisis. Her story is worth reading.
Then when my son was in the eighth grade he took a communications class in which he was required to prepare and present several speeches. When the persuasive speech assignment came up, he was randomly assigned the pro-life position on abortion. As he worked on his speech he shared with me the research that he had found in the school’s article database. The research showed that women who have an abortion with their first pregnancy are 30% to 40% more likely to suffer from depression, attempt to or successfully commit suicide, and to get breast cancer than women who brought their first pregnancy to term. I wondered if these risks are shared with women facing this choice by clinics like Planned Parenthood. Based on Norma McCorvey’s story I suspect that they are not.
When all is said and done, I find that I do not advocate for making abortion completely illegal. This would only lead to those who profit from this industry to go underground and abortion would become even more dangerous than it is.
What I do advocate is that when faced with a decision about what to do with an unplanned pregnancy, women should be given all the information necessary to make an informed and logical choice. They should not be led to believe that the only option is to abort their child, because adoption is also a viable option. They should be made aware of the fact that the child inside them is a living being with his or her own heartbeat. They should be informed that having an abortion increases their risk of depression, suicidal tendencies, and breast cancer by as much as 30% to 40%. They should be made aware that the child they are considering aborting may be destined to be a woman who also deserves the right to choose.
But all of the facts, statistics, and rhetoric in the world will never be enough to change a person’s position on this issue. My position was changed by love – by the love I felt for my lost child and the love of God. Norma McCorvey’s position was changed by the love of the folks at Operation Rescue that moved in next door to the abortion clinic she worked at and the love of God. Ultimately it is love that will win the day in the battle for the lives of unborn children who have no voice of their own.
I missed posting something last week for Thankful Thursday, and couldn’t bear the thought of missing it again and letting those who read my blog think I’d lost my thankfulness. I most certainly have not! Our God has blessed me with so much to be thankful for; and I know that when I focus on my blessings and His grace my outlook on each new day is so much better.
In addition to the grace of Jesus, which I have written a poem about for today, I am also thankful for the triolet form of poetry. Because of the repetition, you get 8 lines for the price of writing 5. It’s a wonderful gift for the writer struggling with writer’s block.
Update: It just now dawned on me that it is not Thursday and that I posted this a day early. Then I realized I was still in time for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub. That is truly the kind of week I’m having, but I’m thankful nonetheless.
The Grace of Jesus
The grace of Jesus my Savior
Flows from His blood on the cross
Bringing me peace and redemption
The grace of my Jesus, my Lord
The source of the world’s salvation
The answer to each petition
The grace of Jesus my Savior
Flows from His blood on the cross
Yesterday I was monitoring a special-accommodation bar exam applicant, which always gives me a little time to read and write. After I posted my poem about forgiveness from my netbook, I started to read a book my sister-in-law Pam gave me a couple of years ago. It’s called Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC by Frederick Buechner.
I’m a little embarrassed to admit it’s taken me this long to read it, but that’s the fate of books around my house. They do all get read eventually, and I love books as gifts, but sometimes it takes me a while. In this instance, however, the section I read fit so perfectly with the whole “which comes first, forgiving or being forgiven” discussion that I’m thinking it was God’s timing.
Wishful Thinking includes Buechner’s “definitions” of 150 words, from the perspective of a Christian seeking to understand the world and God a little better. He is humorous and thoughtful, and perhaps a little irreverent at times, but always honest in what he shares. The entry on forgiveness was so well put:
To forgive somebody is to say one way or another, “You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. Both my pride and my principles (q.v.) demand no less. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you’ve done, and though we may both carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want you for my friend.”
To accept forgiveness means to admit that you’ve done something unspeakable that needs to be forgiven, and thus both parties must swallow the same thing: their pride.
This seems to explain what Jesus means when he says to God, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Jesus is not saying that God’s forgiveness is conditional upon our forgiving others. In the first place, forgiveness that’s conditional isn’t really forgiveness at all, just Fair Warning; and in the second place, our unforgiveness is among those things about us which we need to have God forgive us most. What Jesus apparently is saying is that the pride which keeps us from forgiving is the same pride which keeps us from accepting forgiveness, and will God please help us do something about it.
When somebody you’ve wronged forgives you, you’re spared the dull and self-diminishing throb of a guilty conscience.
When you forgive somebody who has wronged you, you’re spared the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride.
For both parties, forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside their own skins and to be glad in each other’s presence.
Wishful Thinking, pg. 32-33.
What Buechner says here is what I was trying to get at with my poem yesterday. In the end, it is not we who do the forgiving commanded by God by our own power. It is God, working in the humble heart, who helps us forgive and sets us free. He does so because He loves us deeply.
And so each day we should pray, “Help me, Father, to forgive in the same way You have forgiven me—fully and unconditionally—so that I may be set free. Amen”
