Where To Find Christian Poetry

I was browsing in the poetry section of Barnes & Noble one day and I thought, “Wouldn’t be just so nice to find a good book of Christian poetry.” And then as I was driving away it came to mind, “Wait a sec, there are books FULL of the most amazing Christian poetry ever.” You can find them in a lot of churches all over the world – tattered and worn books sitting in the back of pews – and even though most of these poems were written without music, there were other men and women who wrote music for the poems and they have been sung for hundreds of years. I would like very much to write a poem one day and eventually have it be called a hymn. Sometimes I feel like it can be such an underappreciated thing to write poems as a Christian and that the pinnacle of Christian poetry would be to have a well-known blog where I post my poems and people post comments raving about how amazing they are. Now I’m starting to think that pinnacle of Christian poetry would be to write a poem that is sung and brings comfort and conviction to believers long after I am laid in the grave. You don’t have to be able to write music to write a hymn and perhaps the quality of the words and the mixing of truth and beauty will increase in our songs when the poets in churches begin focusing their gifting on writing hymns rather than the some less poetically-gifted musicians trying to come up with words for the awesome melody they just came up with. I think it’s pretty cool to think about. I’m pasting a verse from a poem-become-hymn below. It’s neat to think that this guy was sitting one day on his porch or his study – and perhaps it was raining like it is now – and he took out his pen and started writing. Now a hundred years later we are signing on to The City and reading his words. And perhaps some of us will be sitting on our porch one day with a pen and begin writing just like he did.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

Frederick M. Lehman, 1917

First Days In Buffalo

Revive once more my beloved blog...

Happily sitting in the Elmwood Avenue Starbucks and looking forward to my time in Buffalo. This is probably one of my favorite Starbucks. Some homeless guys hang out here; just talk to one of them for a spell. He saw my Bible and wanted me to pray that he finds a job. He seems as if he has a few screws loose in his head but then again, so do I. His name is Wayne. Pray for Wayne. Pray that he would find a job AND that God might tighten a few of his screws...
It’s nice to imagine what might be in store here and all the possibilities. I feel like I start this new season of my life with a more keen perspective on how my life should be lived and the people I should surround myself with. I am excited to grow in my faith and in my love for God. All of this brings thoughts to my mind and those thoughts are not without fear. I AM afraid of certain things. One of my biggest fears is that my life is meaningless. I know this isn’t true of my whole life but it’s easy for me to doubt in the day-to-day that life on a particular day is meaningless, that the things I am doing aren’t making a difference. I was reminded lately that how far this really is from being the truth; quite the opposite, in fact. You see, the seeds I show every day bear fruit and that fruit yields more seeds which yield more fruit, and so on all the way into eternity.

…Into eternity…

Did you catch that word? Eternity. Every day is filled with eternity. Read that again. SO HOW ON EARTH COULD LIFE BE MEANINGLESS? HOW ON EARTH COULD A DAY BE MEANINGLESS IF EVERY SINGLE DAY IS FILLED WITH ETERNITY? It’s impossible. It’s insane. It makes absolute zero sense.

SO. Every day is full of meaning. And it IS that way because God MADE it that way. He jammed every single day plum-full of meaning, so much so that we are literally SWIMMING in it whether we realize it or not.

I guess that’s the point of this post and a fitting thought to carry with me as I enter into my days in Buffalo. Let me swim and swim and SWIM in plum-full days...through trials and joys and the mixture of the two...swimming into eternity. Every day is filled. FILLED.