Tag Archives: society

Please All-Powerful God

Miscellaneous Thoughts

I wrote this partly in response to Mary’s wise and beautiful poem in Luke 1:46-55.

The subject of POWER has been much on my mind, in part because I have been reading Robert Greene’s entertaining but amoral “The 48 Laws of Power.”

I have been thinking about how God-fearers should relate to power. Of all God’s attributes that we can and should reflect, since He made us in His image, this seems to be one of the most dangerous.

[NOTE: I was very intentional with my punctuation, even in introducing ambiguity to the title]

“Change” Poems:

Previous: My Hobby Horse
Next: Daughters of Rebellion

In Time Out of Mind

Commentary

A friend asked me if there should be a comma after time. Here’s what I told him:

The absence of a comma opens this up to at least three interpretations. I know this style’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Are you familiar with ee cummings’ “my father moved through dooms of love“? That poem brings me to tears whenever I read it.

The slight effort of getting past the absence of punctuation in cummings may add to its emotional impact. Speaking of tea…. Coffee is better than tea precisely for its body, that it slides down not so easily.

So, here are some pointers to meaning:

  • “In time” can mean “eventually”
  • “Time out of mind” is unimaginably long, think Eternity.
  • In a polarized world, it is always “us” versus “they” (deeper in grammar, “us” receives the malevolence that “they” inflict — objective vs subjective). I like to think of a time when there is such peace between a broad diversity of people, that all of us are “WE,” and we never even think of “THEM.”
  • Currently, things are not as they should be. Even at home, we know we are not where we wish to be. A time is coming when we’ll be where we long to be. Then and there, we’ll be at ease. Then and there we’ll be content with here and now.
  • Where will we be? In the presence of the One who is making all things new, the One who will satisfy our hopes and dreams. Now, He often seems distant. We refer to Him in second person, as “He.” Then we’ll address Him face-to-face as “You.”

“Change” Poems:

Previous: Pleasant Sadness
Next: Matters More and Less

Pinnacle of Creation

I was sitting outside our Air BnB while on vacation in Silverthorne, Colorado. It was a crisp mountain morning. The birds were singing, occasionally geese flew over in formation, and this beautiful mountain filled my view (Red Peak?). But next door, there was a workman happily whistling as he worked outside. He distracted from “nature.” But I knew my being annoyed was wrong. I had to write this rebuke to myself.

Was Love Not Enough?

I read that a writer comes alive by telling dead men’s tales. Here’s one such tale, though it’s not the *men* who died. This little poem was a lament. A dear friend had tried to persuade someone that his even-handedness in politics is NOT a retreat from righteousness. But the opponent was trapped in his or her allegiance to one end of the political spectrum.

December 20, 2021 Update: This problem has only grown worse over the last 17 months. I’m now reluctant to talk openly with people I once considered eminently reasonable. I fear being disappointed, and I fear opening the door to enmity where no enmity existed before. Now, more than ever, I live with this refrain: “Anything I say can and will be used against me.” I have a Christ-like friend who had to get off social media because there is someone out there — supposedly a Christian — literally building a case against him, misinterpreting anything he says, casting it in the worst possible light, and cataloging the supposed sins. Call that someone The Accuser.

“Change” Poems:

Previous: The Most Important War

The Kingdom of the Proxies

Commentary

At a recent luncheon at Dallas Seminary, a young lady asked the Australian speaker a profound question, which he didn’t seem to understand: “Does having grown up under monarchy help you better understand these concepts?” I immediately understood her because I think a lot about what is influencing my thinking. The following [above] poem is one attempt to discern how I am affected by having grown up under representative democracy. There have been societies where people didn’t spend a fraction of the time we do THEORIZING about how GOVERNMENT should use our neighbors’ money to effect justice and virtue. Sometimes it seems that’s ALL we do.

We Protestants love the phrase “Kingdom of Priests.” But I fear we may love it for the wrong reason. We love the privileged access we have to God, not the responsibility that entails with regard to God and our fellow man. We are in danger of exchanging “proxies” for “priests.” If you think this is a call to embrace one perishing political system over another, you could not be more wrong. It is precisely the reliance on foolishness of the left and foolishness of the right that I am trying to escape.