His love and justice,
Both soft and hard sides of God:
Sacrifice; judgement –
Salvation through faith by grace,
Yet all are held to account
A tanka written in response to Colleen’s Weekly Poetry Challenge #28 – “Hard” and “Soft”
Easter
Middle Day – #HolyWeek Saturday Haiku #NaPoWriMo2017 #GloPoWriMo2017
Middle day of three
First death claimed him, settling debts
By third, He was free
Day 15 of Na/GloPoWriMo2017 falls on Easter Saturday, and the NaPoWriMo.net challenge is to write a poem that reflects on the nature of being in the middle of something.
It is Fulfilled #Holy Week #Good Friday Tanka
The Scriptures fulfilled
Thirst quenched with wine vinegar
Never forsaken
Jesus took on the world’s sin
His life and mission, complete
Opportunity
Easter holidays,
Timely rescue from workplace –
Opportunity:
Refreshment and renewal,
Resurrection to new life!
written in response to today’s timely prompt at The Daily Post, with grateful thanks for a timely break from workplace torture – bring on the opportunity of renewal and a new life!
Destiny Beckons
Destiny beckons
En route to Jerusalem
Eternity waits
History as prophesied
For the sake of mankind’s souls
Jesus comes to Jerusalem as king
The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival
heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem.
They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,
‘Hosanna!’
‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’
‘Blessed is the king of Israel!’
Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it, as it is written:
‘Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion;
see, your king is coming,
seated on a donkey’s colt.’
At first his disciples did not understand all this.
Only after Jesus was glorified
did they realise that these things had been written about him
and that these things had been done to him.
– John 12:12-16
‘The Donkey’ by G. K. Chesterton
When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.
― G.K. Chesterton
I Shall Testify #NaPoWriMo2017 #GloPoWriMo2017
I shall testify nothing
if not Jesus Christ and Him crucified
whom God presented
as a sacrifice of atonement
the righteous for the unrighteous,
to bring us to God;
for while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us;
in this Way God demonstrated
his own love for us:
reconciling the world
to himself in Christ.
Since Christ was raised from the dead,
he cannot die again;
death no longer has mastery over him:
He has destroyed death,
and has brought life and immortality
to light through the gospel;
for Christ did not enter a sanctuary
manufactured with human hands,
but entered heaven itself,
now to appear for us in God’s presence;
He was put to death in the body
but made alive in the Spirit.
There is one God,
and one mediator between God and mankind:
the man Christ Jesus;
there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom all things came,
and through whom we now may live;
God made his light shine in our hearts
to give us the knowledge of His glory;
this is how we know what love is:
Jesus Christ laid down his life for us
and we ought to follow, and lay down our lives
for the sake of our brothers and sisters.
Day Three of Na/GloPoWriMo2017, and today’s challenge is to write an elegy – a poem that mourns or honours someone dead or something gone by, centred on an unusual fact about the person or thing being mourned. In this case, as I look ahead a couple of weeks to Easter, we mourn Good Friday’s sacrifice, but rejoice in Easter’s resurrection, inspired by the words of Paul the Apostle’s various letters to the New Testament church.
Scars of Salvation
Rent wrists and pierced side
A body cruelly scourged
Scars of salvation
written following yesterday’s daily prompt at The Daily Post
Golgotha
A long time ago
On a hill far faraway
New hope born from death
‘So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. 17 Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). 18 There they crucified him, and with him two others – one on each side and Jesus in the middle.’
– John 19:16-18
written in response to today’s daily prompt from The Daily Post – ‘faraway’
The Bread and the Wine #NaPoWriMo2016 #GloPoWriMo2016
The bread and the wine,
Reverently consumed,
So we never forget
Your death made us room
In the kingdom of heaven,
In the house of the Father,
With the angelic host
Singing praise to the Master.
In the cup, on a plate,
Simple elements combine
To mark Your victory:
Broken bread, poured-out wine.
An old favourite of mine, originally posted in January 2014, and brought out for Day Six of the National Poetry Writing Month challenge – to write a poem about food . . . so why not the Lord’s Supper?
Faith Unlocked 