Tag Archives: nehemiah

Sanballat and Tobiah?

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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 or who gets taken down?

Sanballat, you stinky polecat,
You heavy-handed, fat-headed rat
You poser, you loser, you boozer ding-bat.
Tally these up on your clay ledger mat
Suck on them eggs you viperous diplomat
And stash them in your skanky velvet hat
You blithering boob of a bureaucrat!
Whatcha think about that, Sanballat?

Tobiah the Ammonite, you parasite;
You feast on misfortune, you buggy blight
On humanity, doing good only for spite;
You imagine other’s success as a slight
As if it all were about you, amiright?
You are as alive as a barrow-wight
What you love are the deeds which you do at night
Which you always do when you get lit, get tight.
But one day you’ll be drug out into the light,
And you will fall, fall, so far from your great height.
I’ll say it again, Bruh, if you like,
Tobiah the Ammonite.

Thank you God, that I am not like them
Who use people, do with them all they can,
Evil-Doers, not just every now and then.
But Me? I have given a tenth of every yen
I’ve made, given time and time again;
Oh how I thank you that I am not like those men.

Lord, How many times must I forgive a debt?
He answered with parable, with a gospel net,
Caught me in a trap, and that trap upset
My truce between resentment and regret,
My long record of all I was owed, kept–
A list from A to Z, an alphabet
Of wounds which chained me so I’d never forget,
To which I’m still chained, and still not free yet.

Who will rescue me from where I am at?
From being a Tobiah, Sanballat?
Would He give what I deserve? Give tit for tat?
Pay me out, squash me like some pesky gnat?
Or would He in love, take the blow, be spat
Upon, scorned, become sin, be a doormat
Become for me, Tobiah and Sanballat?

© Randall Edwards 2019.
This poem is for Christ’s church. If it is helpful, please feel free to copy or reprint in church bulletins, read aloud, or repost. I only ask that an attribution be cited to myself (Randall Edwards) and this blog (backwardmutters.com). Thanks.
Artwork: James Tissot (French, 1836-1902). The Pharisee and the Publican (Le pharisien et le publicain), 1886-1894. Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper. Brooklyn Museum, Purchased by public subscription, 00.159.178 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 00.159.178_PS2.jpg)

Start Again

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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, we identify the reality and hidden hopefulness in T. S. Elliot’s words from “The Four Quartets”,

“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from….”

The ending necessary so that something new may start, is the most difficult step. Thankfully it is not the whole journey. Rather the new begins with a step, with picking up one thing, and putting it in its place.

How does one begin when the worst befalls?
And how does one know even where to start
When violence tears down destroys your walls
Leaves vulnerable the tender heart?
And the mind is laid bare with questions, Why?
Regret comes each night, resentment with day,
Keeps you awake, leaves you looking at sky
For an answer, some direction, or way.

Forward rather, seems going round again
Repairing the old, fitting in the new,
Filling the breaches, and facing the pain,
Not delivered from the trial, but through.
So I start again, admit I need grace,
Hand o’er my life, set the first piece in place.

© Randall Edwards 2019.
This poem is for Christ’s church. If it is helpful, please feel free to copy or reprint in church bulletins, read aloud, or repost. I only ask that an attribution be cited to myself (Randall Edwards) and this blog (backwardmutters.com). Thanks.
Artwork: Gustave Doré [Public domain]

Time’s Fullness

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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” which echos the song of the exiles in Psalm 137. Time both seems to stand still and move. Nehemiah receives the news in the month of Chislev, but doesn’t approach the king until four months later in Nisan. How might time seemed to have passed as he waited and prayed? And once he determined to make his request, how quickly did it pass to conclude with an answer?

Time sometimes turns with a question which you
Toss to a friend as he passes through;
Your world comes apart with, “Didn’t you hear?”

To crash on your head, up to your ears.

To you, time had borne your hopes as a stream;
Now blocked it pools in troubling dreams,
O’erflows its banks, puddles, makes a dammed slough,
Leaves you stuck in the moment, mired in right now.

But faith takes time and patiently bears
The mind’s burdens, the heart’s worrisome cares
To the God of heaven whose will holds the key
That turns the door’s lock and brings delivery.

When time’s fullness at last fin’lly comes,
Delivery gives birth and makes us sons.

© Randall Edwards 2019.
This poem is for Christ’s church. If it is helpful, please feel free to copy or reprint in church bulletins, read aloud, or repost. I only ask that an attribution be cited to myself (Randall Edwards) and this blog (backwardmutters.com). Thanks.
Artwork: Mobilos [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D