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Sanballat and Tobiah?
This (I can hardly call it a poem) is based on Nehemiah 4 in which Nehemiah and the work of rebuilding Jerusalem’s wall is opposed by Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite. It may be a spoken word hit piece. The question always comes back, who’s the one hit…
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Start Again
This sonnet is based on Nehemiah 3 where Nehemiah recounts the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem. Repair work is difficult because of the “re-” part. Having to tend again to something that was previously finished exposes the grief of the impermanence of this world. When however, we are sober,…
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Time’s Fullness
This sonnet is first in a new series from the book of Nehemiah. It finds its inspiration in both Nehemiah 1 and Galatians 4:4,5. I was particularly struck by the moment word of the destruction of Jerusalem’s walls and gates reached Nehemiah. He writes that he “sat down and wept”…
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Dwell in Me
This sonnet is based on: Ephesians 1:3-14. God: Father, Christ, and Spirit blessed be, Whose embrace enfolds with the Trinity, Who with every blessing blesses me. Father, before I was, you loved me Not because I was a saint or lovely, But to make me holy, you chose me. Jesus,…
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You Who Thirst
It was a dull Autumn day and Jill Pole was crying behind the gym. She was crying because they had been bullying her…. C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair Jill Pole is one of my favorite characters in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. Introduced in The Silver Chair‘s first lines,…
Backward Mutters 