Betrayed and Denied – A Poem

Betrayed with a kiss
by one whose feet
He washed
but whose heart
remained unclean

Denied three times
by one whose feet
He washed
but who felt remorse
and was restored

May we all be like Peter
and not Judas

Wait for the Harvest – A Poem

When your basket is empty
and the harvest is far away
despair is all your heart recalls
and you can’t bear another day
call on the Lord of the harvest
He will hear you when you pray

In times of great tribulation
your faith the Lord is growing
His perfect and pleasing will
is what He desires your knowing
He will deliver harvest aplenty
fill your basket to overflowing

* * * * *

In the book of Ruth, Naomi finds herself with an empty basket, an empty life. After traveling to a foreign land, her husband dies and then her two sons die. She is left with only her two foreign daughters-in-law. Her life is bitter and barren. But then she returns, with her daughter-in-law Ruth, to her homeland in Bethlehem just at the beginning of the barley harvest. By the end of the story the Lord has refilled her basket with many blessings. During our group discussion of chapter 1 last Monday evening the idea for this poem was born.

4/2/13 update: I’ve shared this for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night today. Head over and check out some other poetry.

Last Breath – A Cinquain

Breathing
in, out again
no other sound so dear
except if you spoke, one more time,
I’d hear.

I wrote this cinquain for dVerse Poets Pubs FormForAll. It is my attempt to capture my experience of Thursday last week as I sat in my sister’s hospital room, praying she had it in her to keep fighting cancer, but knowing she did not.

Refuge – A Found Poem

Where you go I will go,
and where you stay I will stay.
Your people will be my people
and your God my God.

The Lord is my refuge.

May the Lord repay you
for what you have done.

The Lord is my refuge.

May you be richly rewarded
by the Lord, the God of Israel,
under whose wings you have come
to take refuge.

The Lord is my refuge.

He has not stopped showing
his kindness to the living and the dead.

The Lord is my refuge.

Praise be to the Lord,
who this day has not left you
without a guardian-redeemer.

The Lord is my refuge.

May he become famous throughout Israel!
He will renew your life
and sustain you in your old age.

The Lord is my refuge and my redeemer.

This found poem is from various verses throughout the book of Ruth, which we just started studying this week in my Bible study class.

Presidential Wisdom – A Poem

Great presidents of these United States
Washington and Lincoln we honor on this day
May their words of wisdom
Bless and keep us on our way

Of all the dispositions and habits
which lead to political prosperity,
religion and morality are indispensable support.¹

May we never forget that
It is impossible to rightly
govern the world
without God and the Bible.¹
In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say,
it is the best gift God has given to man.
All the good the Savior gave to the world
was communicated through this book.²

As we face violence and economic crisis
remind us, O Lord, that at its core,
It is the eternal struggle between these
two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world.
They are the two principles that have stood
face to face from the beginning of time;
and will ever continue to struggle.²
Let us raise a standard to which
the wise and honest can repair;
the rest is in the hands of God.¹

Help us, O Lord, to not forget what history
and the wisdom of experience teach.
Let us with caution indulge the supposition
that morality can be maintained without religion.
Reason and experience both forbid us
to expect that national morality can prevail
in exclusion of religious principle.¹

Teach us, O Lord, to emulate our forefathers and say,
I have been driven many times upon my knees
by the overwhelming conviction that I had
nowhere else to go.
My own wisdom and that of all about me
seemed insufficient for that day.²

This “found” poem is based on quotes from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as indicated by the footnotes to italicized words as follows:

¹George Washington
²Abraham Lincoln

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made – A Poem

This morning as I was getting ready for work the song All Fall Down by MercyMe was playing on my iPod. I paused my iPod towards the end of this song for my prayer time and picked up my book of Psalms for Prayer to read the next psalm, which happened to be Psalm 139. I had to smile when I got to verse 14 because it is one of the lines in the song I had just been listening to. Psalm 139:14 says, “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

I decided to write a short psalm of my own based on this verse and to also share the song by MercyMe. Because it is Tuesday, I will be sharing this later today for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

I will praise You, O Lord
for I am fearfully and wonderfully made

You are the Creator of my soul
my mind, my talents and strengths

You knew me before I was
and had a plan for all my days

Take my strengths, O Lord
and use them to Your glory

You are the Creator of all that I am
Your ways are too wonderful for me to understand

Take my weaknesses, O Lord, my God
and show Your might and power to overcome

I am fearfully and wonderfully made
to You belongs all my praise

 

Broken Heart of Love – A Poem

Broken Heart of Love

This searing pain in my heart
I wish it would go away
I pray for it to leave me
But it is love
I would be hollow without it

I watch you drowning
in a sea of turmoil and fear
I reach out my hand,
the one connected to my broken heart
“It’s okay, the sailing’s fine,” you say

I walk away, thinking perhaps
My eyes deceive me and you are not
drowning, or else why
would you say otherwise?
I know you would not lie

But still this pain
deep down inside my aching heart
reminds me
that you are not fine,
the sea is not calm

The storm rages
but I cannot rescue you
You cannot see my hand
reaching through the darkness
beckoning you to dry land

Joseph: The Forgotten Character

When we think of the Christmas story, it seems we tend to forget the role that Joseph played in this historical event. We rightly focus on the baby Jesus, or often on His mother Mary. To be sure, Joseph is there in every nativity scene, but do we really comprehend the importance he plays in this story and what we can learn from him?

Mary knew beyond any doubt that she was a virgin and when she found herself pregnant she had no trouble believing that what the angel had told her was true. But Joseph had no such assurance. He had been told in a dream by an angel that Mary’s baby was the Son of God, but surely he had doubts. For Joseph to believe, he had to have faith and to trust God’s messenger as well as his new bride.

This afternoon I’ve been listening to Christmas music and wrapping presents to the smell of a rib roast in the slow cooker for Christmas Eve dinner. The song Joseph’s Lullaby by MercyMe came on and I found myself pondering the thought of Joseph accepting Jesus as the Son of God while at the same time treating the Holy Child as his own son.

Paul wrote to the Ephesian church, “In love he [God] predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” Ephesians 1:5-6 (NIV). In the same way, Joseph adopted the baby Jesus as his son, even though he knew the child was not his. In faith, Joseph raised this miracle Child as his own, teaching Him the craft of a carpenter and the love of God. In all that Joseph did as the earthly father of Jesus, he glorified God the Father.

So this Christmas, let’s remember Joseph, the forgotten character of the story at the center of all history.

Pray for Knowledge of Christ’s Love

Earlier this week during my morning prayer time I read a wonderful passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. This passage is one of my favorite prayers in the Bible:

For this reason I kneel before the Father,from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:14-19 (NIV).

At the time I thought about how this passage would be a great basis for a blog post reminding people how much God loves them, but the week got away from me and the post didn’t get written. Today, following the tragedies in Portland, Oregon (so close to my home) and in Connecticut, I realize that God’s timing is perfect because this passage holds the answer so many are looking for as to how someone could do such an evil thing as shoot strangers in a mall or kindergarteners in a school, not to mention their own mother.

Throughout scripture we are told that the heart of mankind is evil. The reason we are told God flooded the earth and saved only Noah and his family is because “The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” Genesis 6:5 (NIV). Of one of the kings of Israel it is said, “He did evil because he had not set his heart on seeking the Lord.” 2 Chronicles 12:14 (NIV). As Jesus explained to His disciples, “For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. ²³ All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’” Mark 7:22-23 (NIV).

But the heart that grasps the love of Christ is filled with the fullness of God. In such a heart evil thoughts are driven out by love and compassion. In this world we live in, and especially in the United States, people think they can live without God. Many don’t teach their children that God loves them, perhaps because they don’t know this wonderful truth themselves, and then we are surprised when children grow up to be murderers.

The problem that leads to such tragedies as we have seen this week is not that people have guns, it is that they do not have Christ. I realize that there are plenty of people who do not believe in or know God who do not go out and murder others, but I also know that those who commit such unspeakable acts cannot possibly know God’s love for them.

The love of Christ is kind of like a vaccine. We give vaccines to all our kids to prevent them from getting terrible diseases, even though not every kid would get the disease if the vaccine was not given. We need to vaccinate all our children against the evil that has the potential to take over their hearts, and that vaccine is the heart knowledge of the love of God that surpasses human knowledge.

As Christians, we need to pray not only for those who have suffered a great tragedy, but we need to pray every day—as Paul did for the Ephesians—for our children to have the power “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.”

Psalm 93 – A Prayer for Sandy Survivors

Watching the news of the devastation hurricane Sandy caused on the east coast is heartbreaking. I can’t imagine living through a natural disaster of that magnitude. It makes me thankful I live in the Pacific Northwest where the only natural disaster we worry about that could cause anywhere near as much damage as Sandy has is a volcano erupting, and those don’t happen very often.

As I read the next Psalm at the beginning of my prayer time this morning, I was amazed at how perfect this Psalm is as a prayer for those on the east coast facing the massive clean-up effort. It is a reminder that although the sea rose up and caused massive damage, God still reigns and will provide the strength needed to continue on. May the Lord be strength and comfort for those in need.

Psalm 93

¹ The Lord reigns, he is robed in majesty;
the Lord is robed in majesty and armed with strength;
indeed, the world is established, firm and secure.
² Your throne was established long ago;
you are from all eternity.

³ The seas have lifted up, Lord,
the seas have lifted up their voice;
the seas have lifted up their pounding waves.
⁴ Mightier than the thunder of the great waters,
mightier than the breakers of the sea—
the Lord on high is mighty.

⁵ Your statutes, Lord, stand firm;
holiness adorns your house
for endless days.