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Could Your Word?
This sonnet is next in a series based on Psalm 119. The sections of Psalm 119 stand alone as individual meditations. Even though the sections are distinct, many themes repeat and are re-voiced throughout. The Psalmist makes use of a metaphor which captured my imagination. Speaking of the personal impact…
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I Walked for Him
This poem is based on Psalm 199:65-80, and is next in the series The Disciple’s Alphabet. In the poem I imagine the psalmist reflecting on their previous suffering and how that affliction was employed to teach and sanctify. The psalmist speaks of the insolent and their scoffing of whom the…
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What I Hold
This poem is based on Psalm 119:49-64 in which I came to imagine its expression through the account of Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the Lord at Peniel in Genesis 32. The artwork is Rembrandt’s painting of the same event which I find intriguing. The angel is not struggling,…
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Your Strong Love
This poem is based on Psalm 119:33-48. Psalm 119 is an acrostic poem with the eight lines of each twenty-two verse section beginning with the same Hebrew letter and continuing through the Hebrew alphabet. For the writer, the form limits both the vocabulary and gives a shape to the poem…
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Grace Gives
This sonnet is based on Psalm 119:17-32. I draw the theme of grace from the first line, “deal bountifully with me.” Not an expression or word we use much in conversation, “bounty” is the gift received before the previous gift is expended; it is an overflow. How does one receive…
Backward Mutters 