Poetry Happens Again

The anonymous comment from a few days ago sparked a little nag in me about poetry. About reading it, not writing it. I thought, "It's true, I probably ought to be reading more poetry if I want to write it, huh?"


I've been reading some great children's poems and rhymes lately, curled up with Ethan, but suddenly it dawned on me that I could try some "grown up poetry," something beyond Aunt Jobiska's cat :)

I didn't really mean to, but last night, I pulled out my book of Miltons poems- the greenish grey one with the black binding; the one I randomly bought at an antique store three or four years ago on a whim (I never buy things at antique stores!) The book has merely been decorating my dresser with a few neighbors- some of them books I actually have read, like Lord of the Rings.


All day I'd been tired, irritable, and stressed over all the little uncontrollable things in my life, and I just needed God...needed Him very much to just be more than a distant enthroned deity, or a religious teacher of bygone days. But I was laying there on the floor, cracking open a book of poetry I was sure I'd never really tackle. I read some. I skimmed some gushy stuff. Then I came to a poem called "The Passion," about the suffering of Jesus, where I read these lines:


"Most perfect Heroe, try'd in heaviest plight
Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight."


That tender discription of Jesus melted me. I remembered the sermon we heard on Sunday about Jesus being the Beautiful Servant...It's so hard to picture Jesus as the tender, able, humble, unassuming Hero I need when I have a head crowded with Jesus Film images of the celsestial looking man with silky locks.


If God had been the legalistic deity I sometimes am tempted to think He is, He would have tapped His fingers impatiently, waiting for me to finish my little poetic fling and move on to, you know, the Bible before speaking to me like that. But He was so kind to just touch me with a piece of poetry.


I keep shying away from it, like an orphaned child who fears offering affection to an adopted parent, and He keeps impressing it gently:


Poetry is a ministry...
A ministry to me...
A ministry through me...