We pick and choose those we call friend
And ask “who is my neighbor?”
Begrudging love to those in need —
Why waste our time and labor?
For we can guess each hidden sin,
“He drank”, “She stole”, “They slandered.”
The Lord may love the whole wide world
We have a higher standard.
Since we had so much fun a couple days ago with parodies of the awful lyrical homage to Jack Hyles, this Friday’s challenge is to slap together some iambic pentameter (or whatever meter makes you happy) and write a poem on this theme: The Managawd’s Lament.
As always, the contest winner will vigorously glad-handed and then promptly forgotten.
Today’s reader-submitted photo is a snapshot of a poem that a pastor wrote about his hero, Jack Hyles.
We’re told that where no vision is the people won’t survive
But those who claim to see the plan seem not much more alive
They tell us “take your children’s last red cent and gladly share it”
But with it they will build the things their children will inherit
The call goes out both far and near to reach our fellow man
The first step for the pastor is: a great new building plan.
So put your pennies in the plate and he’ll give all the orders
The pastor’s kingdom will soon have much larger (fenced in) borders
“I’ll build an empire here (for God) and then I’ll be its king!”
A blind man’s vision can be quite a tragic kind of thing.
I discovered these lines from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Lord Byron while I was near the end my career at Fundy U and they struck a chord with me as I looked around and saw the false piety and hypocrisy of fundamentalism in the “world” in which was living at the time. Since then I have read them again from time to time when feelings of helplessness and weariness in pursuing the struggle against such an incorrigible system have again overwhelmed me.
I hope that if you too have ever sensed that you are alone in your struggle against whatever part of Fundistan you inhabited that these lines might give voice to a muffled cry that has sounded in your heart as well.
I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee, –
Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.I have not loved the world, nor the world me, –
But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things,–hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the falling: I would also deem
O’er others’ griefs that some sincerely grieve;
That two, or one, are almost what they seem, –
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream.
It’s a good thing that I have faith that in the end of it all Jesus wins. My hope can be built on nothing less.