Thought for Today
2 Samuel 23:1 Now these are the last words of David: The oracle of David, the son of Jesse, the oracle of the man who was raised on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, the sweet psalmist of Israel: (RSV)
Psalm 23:1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want; (NRSV) . . . 4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. (KJV)
Acts 17:28 For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'
“Poetry (from the Greek word poiesis, "making") is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings.” “Prose is language that follows the natural flow or rhythm of speech, ordinary grammatical structures, or, in writing, typical conventions and formatting.” (en.wikipedia.org)
For Christmas, I was given a new book, Poems & Prayers (Matthew McConaughey, Crown Publishing, 2025). Are you a poetry reader? Or, do you prefer prose? Do you remember your sigh of relief when, in junior high school/senior high school or college, you took your last English class where you had to read and study poetry? Maybe you struggled your way through Billy Budd or Invictus, trying desperately to recognize and/or understand the metaphors . . . and only finding confusing words that made no sense.
My own relationship with poetry and poets is a complex, sometime-thing. At various stages of my life I have eschewed all things poetical. At other times I have read, enjoyed and even delighted in poetry. I first read Invictus in junior high school. I can still recall the thrill of “Out of the night that covers me,/Black as the pit from pole to pole,/I thank whatever gods may be/For my unconquerable soul.” My young mind was fascinated by the depth of the idea conveyed by those few words. About the same time, I read several poems by Rudyard Kipling and came to love iambic pentameter.
A few years later, about the time I met Greta, I read Robert Browning’s Rabbi Ben Ezra. We still occasionally recite together the opening line, “Grow old along with me!/The best is yet to be,/The last of life, for which the first was made:” Age plus almost 60 years of marriage have revealed to me the truth of Browning’s words written to his own wife.
In seminary, I first learned to understand the Bible book of Psalms as poetry. For most of us, recognizing the poetry in Psalms is a bit difficult. Hebrew poetry does not follow the same rhyming pattern of our own. Hebrew poetry rhymes or contrasts thoughts and ideas. The patterns become obvious when you read Psalms in Hebrew. The other distinctive element in Hebrew poetry is that it often is done as an acrostic, “a composition usually in verse in which sets of letters (such as the initial or final letters of the lines) taken in order form a word or phrase or a regular sequence of letters of the alphabet.” (merriam-webster.com) The acrostic psalms are alphabetic, the first line beginning with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and so on. Psalm 119, the longest of the psalms is an acrostic.
As I read my new book of poetry, I cannot help but reflect on the poetry in my faith. When I was young, I did not spend much time reading Psalms. I did earn my gold star in Vacation Bible School by memorizing the 23rd Psalm. Now, every time I read that psalm, I realize the evocative power and beauty of those few lines, especially the 2 verses above.
I have a Bible software I used extensively. I have the display formatted to offer me several different translations and both the Greek and Hebrew sources. If you notice those verses above, you will note that on some, I have noted which translation I quote. I do find great comfort in Psalm 23. I am always fascinated when I read it that no one has captured the degree of comfort in verse 4 as well as did the translators of the King James Version. Interestingly, they also did the most accurate rendition into English of the Greek and Hebrew. Their translation is the most comforting and reassuring capture of the gospel good news of our faith I find, poetic or prose. The “aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings” is amazingly powerful for me.
Stay safe, find your own poetry in the Bible, trust God,
Pastor Ray