The poem of life
I was driving back to Suffolk from Harrogate recently after a difficult trip. The circumstances of my life are challenging; I was widowed last year and have recently moved to Suffolk, I’m in the process of clearing and selling our family home and the trip had evoked some painful memories. My father also passed away in February and my mother, who has been seriously ill, is still in hospital in Harrogate and I had been visiting her. I was driving south with a very heavy heart as I reflected on all these events and decided the best thing to do was to tell the Lord how I was feeling about it all.
As I neared Peterborough I turned on the CD player and listened to the following words from the song ‘The poem of your life’ by Michael Card:
As I neared Peterborough I turned on the CD player and listened to the following words from the song ‘The poem of your life’ by Michael Card:
“Life is a song we must sing with our days
A poem with meaning more than words can say
A painting with colours no rainbow can tell
A lyric that rhymes either heaven or hell.
We are living letters that doubt desecrates
We’re the notes of the song of the chorus of faith
God shapes every second of our little lives
And minds every minute as the universe waits by."
Chorus: "The pain and the longing – The joy and the moments of light – Are the rhythm and rhyme – The free verse of the poem of life.
A poem with meaning more than words can say
A painting with colours no rainbow can tell
A lyric that rhymes either heaven or hell.
We are living letters that doubt desecrates
We’re the notes of the song of the chorus of faith
God shapes every second of our little lives
And minds every minute as the universe waits by."
Chorus: "The pain and the longing – The joy and the moments of light – Are the rhythm and rhyme – The free verse of the poem of life.
I stopped at Peterborough services, took my Bible into MacDonalds and sat and reflected on the words I’d just listened to as I ate my meal.
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."
Ephesians 2:10
“You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the Living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.”
2 Corinthians 3:2-3
The Bible says that we are God’s workmanship, ‘poiema’ in the Greek, his masterpieces; we are living epistles and thus our lives are meant to be listened to, because it is God who is speaking into and out of and through them, through the story of each day. I found the thought that my life forms a parable, or poem, being written by the Lord – even in the midst of the most difficult of circumstances – encouraging. Life does contain pain and longing as well as joy and moments of light but it is all part of God’s story and, as such, our ‘little lives’ do matter and how we respond to the circumstances of our lives matters because we are telling God’s story in our day to day lives.
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."
Ephesians 2:10
“You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the Living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.”
2 Corinthians 3:2-3
The Bible says that we are God’s workmanship, ‘poiema’ in the Greek, his masterpieces; we are living epistles and thus our lives are meant to be listened to, because it is God who is speaking into and out of and through them, through the story of each day. I found the thought that my life forms a parable, or poem, being written by the Lord – even in the midst of the most difficult of circumstances – encouraging. Life does contain pain and longing as well as joy and moments of light but it is all part of God’s story and, as such, our ‘little lives’ do matter and how we respond to the circumstances of our lives matters because we are telling God’s story in our day to day lives.
Julie Gorton, May 2014
