The Greatest Joy

We’re slandered and insulted,

Betrayed and ridiculed

Potrayed as evil, backward

And so effortlessly fooled.

 

Relentless in their mockery,

Comfortable with lies,

They never tire of poking fun

At those they so despise.

 

They laugh at our great suffering

And flaunt their stolen wealth

Secured by crony networks

And in the best of health.

 

And yet we have a hope that their blind eyes can never see,

And know a joy so deep it runs into eternity.

We know the Source of all, who is above all time and space,

Whose glories far outweigh all trials that we could ever face.

 

His peace is overwhelming, his mercy covers all;

His grace is still transforming all victims of the Fall.

Our future is so radiant with love and joy and light,

So how could we fear mortal men in all their puny might?

 

We won’t lash out in anger, we’ll rest and sleep in peace,

Then in the morning work to make His loving rule increase.

So pause now and consider, who you’ll serve and trust —

The Lord of all creation, or men drunk with powerlust?

New Year

A calendar completes its course, it’s cycle ends this day,

People see this as a chance to live a different way.

But opportunities for transformation come each hour,

Not just when fireworks fly and great bells ring from every tower.

 

Every waking moment we have space to turn around

Reevaluate our goals and aim for higher ground

Through willpower freer than the chains of our own circumstance,

We can change the style and aims of our own journey’s dance.

 

Repentance quite literally means that you change your mind;

Transform the way you think and value every end and kind.

This precious gift from upon high to reverse our decay

And key to free us from the debt we never could repay.

A Year

A year she has sparkled,

A year she has grown,

A year she has learned so much

And through her beauty shown.

 

A princess among princes,

A doe among the bucks,

A precious jewel in our crown,

With this important crux:

 

That she and all her brothers

Are loved as gifts from God,

Encouraged to fulfil the call

With more than just a nod;

 

To live full lives of service

To honour and to bless

The lives and world around them,

Even under stress.

 

Each day we will protect her

And guide her as she learns;

Making new discoveries,

Finding new concerns,

 

Safe in the sure knowledge

That she is dearly loved;

The latest of the living gifts

Sent us from above.

What is this mysterious sweet temptation?

What is this mysterious sweet temptation?

Table manners are very important in this family

Table manners are very important in this family

Conspiracy

The greatest ever general calls his lieutenant in:
“Greetings, my most faithful friend,” he opens with a grin.
“Our armies are positioned, our men thoroughly supplied
with weapons and technology from which no man can hide.

Our enemy is unprepared for our impending strike
With overwhelming force we’ll crush Him, then do as we like.
His degrading chains will never coil round us again,
At last we will be liberated, proud and noble men!”

“Your stirring words and readiness are music to my ears,
But who is this great tyrant who has ruled us all these years?”
“Why God, of course,” the general informs him with a sigh.
“Er, what?” responds the lieutenant, bemusement in his eye.

“God. Now we have agents in each church recording names,
Those traitors will be rounded up, each building purged with flames.”
“You mean the God of Israel? Creator of all things?”
“Yes, with his ‘morality’ and ‘mercy’ with its strings.”

“You want people to lie to you? to steal and kill your friends?”
“No, I will do that to them, on us their life depends!
They would not dare arouse my ire, they’ll fear our awesome might”
“But can you trust a living soul if you ban what is right?”

“Irrelevant! No need for trust when we have total power,
Those loyal will get fine rewards, dissenters will all cower.
Nothing else is needed to establish our domains,
The people will be grateful to be freed of moral chains.”

“But what about what God did to the Soviets and Rome,
The Egyptians and Assyrians? All superpowers at home.”
“Coincidence,” the general shrugs. “Now as for education–”
“How can you hope to undermine the Lord of all Creation?

“You cannot catch him by surprise, he knows what you will do,
He’s not just indestructible, with throngs of angels, too,
but utterly unstoppable, the Lord of life and death,
It’s only because He allows, that you can draw a breath.”

“You fret too much, all that we need is to coordinate;
we’ll overcome his ‘truth’ and ‘love’ with floods of lies and hate.”
“I’m out of here,” the junior departs silent as a wraith,
“Come back here, you fool, can’t you just have a little faith?”

Inspired by Twenty-Nine

Apologies for the delay, I was struck down by a strong cold. This is another in my old series ‘Thoughts Inspired by Psalms’, but instead of merely quoting it, this time I have transformed its main points into verse:

Inspired by Twenty-Nine

Beyond the sight of every land, o’er ocean dark and deep
The fiercest storm in history extends its mighty sweep
Waves soar up to the very sky, winds roar and screech and tear
Crests into swarms of spray and foam, lightning sears the air. Continue reading

Imagine God

My apologies for the delay, the summer heat has caused an eye irritation that means I cannot look at text on a screen for long without a lot of discomfort, so we’ll see how soon before I can write anything else.

In the meantime, this is what got me started as a poet, and made me realise I might have some talent for poetry, much to my surprise. The situation that brought this experiment about is not a happy one.

For the first year of my marriage, we lived in a rented flat, and our landlord was a young man in his late twenties, living with his girlfriend on the floor above us. He was killed in a car crash about halfway through our tenancy, and we of course attended his funeral. It was the most depressing event I have ever attended, utter despair written into the faces of everyone in his family at such a promising life cut so tragically short, and one of the songs played over his open grave was ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon/Yoko Ono.

I was probably the only native English speaker at the funeral, so I’d like to think that whoever chose that song didn’t understand it, only knowing that he had liked it. I remember thinking at the time that it was a terrible song for a funeral, since its message is one of forsaking all hope for the next life in exchange for some presumed happiness in this one.

It is a beautiful haunting melody, so I set about writing some alternative lyrics that would be close to the original wording while transforming its message into one of genuine hope. Here is the result:

Continue reading

The Dawn

This saddest chore we will fulfill,
We women weak and weary still
From all these awful days have wrought,
We will ebalm him as we ought.

But who will roll the stone away, and what about the guard?
So many things combined to make this day so very hard.
There’s the rich man’s garden, but what happened to the tomb?
My friends nervously approach and peer into the gloom. Continue reading

The Darkest Day

 

The one on whom we pinned our hopes is now forever gone;
His broken, twisted corpse has shown all witnesses Rome won!
His promises of life and mercy clearly all a fraud,
Hide and lock yourselves away before you face a vicious sword!

What was he thinking? When they came he told us not to fight,
He surrendered with such calm, as if he controlled that night.
We could have made a break for it and seen another day,
With all the wonders that he worked, there had to be another way…

When he merely said his name, they all fell to the ground,
Wasn’t he supposed to clear the temple then be crowned?
Clearly not, no king would choose to die the way he did,
When morning comes it will be time that we all fled and hid.

Deny you ever knew him, or you’ll share his shameful fate;
Our home towns might just take us back, if it’s not too late.
Our women want to see the tomb, embalm his body right,
There they go, despite the gloom of dawn’s approaching light…