Psalm 137 For The Year 2010

Alan Roxburgh shares this poem that was written by a participant at a conference he was leading a few years ago.

137 For 2010

In the midst of this crazy world I look around and
wonder what has happened.
How do I talk to a kid with a ring in his nose?
Does “The Old Rugged Cross” mean anything to him?
He asks me to sing a song about “my Jesus”.
From what I can tell he is from another planet,
or am I the stranger here?
I think it’s time to sell the wurlitzer.
So how do I tell Martians about Jesus,
when the only language I speak is 1955?
How do I write a headline for them
that doesn’t screw up the Good News?
I kind of wish it were the way it was,
but it’s not. So I need to figure out
how to sing the old lyrics
with a whole new tune.

Picture This

Normally, with that heading, you’d expect to find a photo here.  I actually have a few that I think will turn out to be pretty good ones, but they’re still in the camera right now.  Instead today I am thinking of word pictures.  On Sunday nights I’m preaching from the book of Jeremiah.  His ability to paint a mental picture with words is powerful and he does it with poetry.

A couple of weeks ago we read from chapter four.  Jeremiah is describing the spiritual condition of his day. Hear him:

23 I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void;
and to the heavens, and they had no light.
24 I looked on the mountains, and behold, they were quaking,
and all the hills moved to and fro.
25 I looked, and behold, there was no man,
and all the birds of the air had fled.
26 I looked, and behold, the fruitful land was a desert,
and all its cities were laid in ruins
before the Lord, before his fierce anger.

Did you catch that?  It’s the anti-creation story.  In the place of the Genesis account where things move from chaos to order now things are moving from order back to chaos.  It’s as if the world is falling apart.  It’s as if creation is being undone.

He does something similar in chapter eight.  Nature behaves according to the ways God has created it to. 

7  Even the stork in the heavens knows her times,
    and the turtledove, swallow, and crane
        keep the time of their coming,
    but my people know not the rules of the Lord.

In other words, the birds of nature know when to fly south and when to fly back north.  But the people of God don’t know how to naturally be the people of God.  We would expect them to practice steadfast love, justice and righteousness, just like their Father.  But they don’t (9:23-24).

These poetic images have a way of cutting to the heart that simple prose does not.  The ability to paint these pictures and tell these stories lie at the heart of our ability to effectively communicate God’s message to us.

Journey Of The Magi

In light of my last post I offer this poetic reflection given to us by T. S. Eliot

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the now line, smelling of vegetation,
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky.
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of sliver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?  There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt.  I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different;  this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.