I’m not a poetry person, but every now and then I bump into a poem that I understand (rare) and love (even rarer). Here’s one I came across a few days ago – I hope you like it as much as I do!
The spoken word
Has always been sanctified here, since
The Creator God spoke
This place into existence;
And careless, we throw words around
Like worthless fruit stems,
Forgetting they have the power
To give life
And take life
To give being
And take it away again.
“I have an idea,” we say,
And stumbling and stammering
More excited then eloquent
We begin to frame the genesis
Of a movement, a business,
A creative work of art.
Other voices
Other words
Come back at us,
“That’s crazy.”
“That’s a strange idea.”
“That will never work.”
Any one of these common phrases is enough
To starve a fledgling idea
Of its very life.
Words take life
Can take it before it even
Is born into the world,
And at times,
It would seem
That the safest way
Is silence.
But silence kills, too.
When we witness a bully
On the playground,
Or in the pew,
Or in parliament
And turn away,
Shrugging off
Responsibility
Like an unneeded jacket,
When we turn away
And say nothing,
Our silence
Is a consent to the injustice.
Our silence
Says we support the injustice.
And silence
Has been the undoing of many a person.
We humans look to others
For commendation
For affirmation
For the words “I love you,”
And if they never come,
Then we hear
In the silence,
“You are not good enough
“You are not worthy
“You are not loved.”
And with no other words
We are left
To fend off these lies
Alone.
No wonder
The silence drains our life away
The lonely, lonely silence.
But we are not alone.
The Word
Existed
Before the world.
The Word
Spoke the world into existence.
The Word
Became flesh and dwelt among us.
And He spoke
To defend the undefended.
“He that is without sin
Let him cast the first stone.”
He spoke
To affirm.
“What she has done here today
Will be spoken of in generations to come.”
He spoke
To bring life.
“Lazarus come forth.”
He spoke
To bring forgiveness.
“Father, forgive them
For they know not what they do.”
But The Word was also silent,
Taking the whipping
Like a slave
Taking the judgement
In our place
Taking the death
So He, The Lamb of God
Could say,
“It is finished.”
The Word
Knew the power of words.
He heard the denial of Peter
“I do not know this man,”
Not once,
Not twice,
But
Three times.
He also asked
“Peter, do you love me?”
Not once,
Not twice,
But
Three times.
The Word knows
The spoken word
Has the power of redemption.
Our words
Spoken words have the power of redemption,
When cleansed by His blood,
This once bleeding,
Now living, breathing
Word of God.
Visit Yolanda’s blog to hear a spoken word version of this poem. Visit her at: Travellight94. Thank you to Yolanda for giving me permission to share her poem with you.
