Showing posts with label Bible people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bible people. Show all posts

November 6, 2021

Bible people, Bible-based poems


After centuries of the King James Version of the Bible and Douay-Rheims providing the main English editions to choose from, biblical scholars and interdenominational committees revisited the ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic texts to provide us with contemporary versions we could more readily understand.

For quite a while in the 20th and 21st centuries, Bible publishers regularly released new translations, updated versions, and reader-targeted editions of God’s Word.  But then, with the ebbing of that flood, we now have fewer Bibles to review.

Most likely, this will change as new archeological finds and knowledge of biblical languages and cultures increase. Meanwhile, I hope you’ll welcome some Bible story poems that, I pray, will speak to your spirit.

As a life-long lover of the Bible and an avid reader of most of the translations I’ve reviewed, I enjoy getting to know God’s people – those present and those long past. Since my first writing love is poetry, it was inevitable that some of my Bible favorites would find themselves portrayed in A Gathering of Poems – the 2020 collection of my previously published (and a few new) poems.

 

Returning People

They’ve come, you know.
They've come through
Genesis singing Psalms
and Lamentations and landing
at your kitchen table. Sometimes
they walked. Sometimes they
danced. Sometimes they dragged
themselves through First and
Second Chronicles into one
war then another around a world
that rolls like parchment across
four walls where you sometimes
think you’re cornered until
they remind you that you’re not.

Listen. They come with slings and
tambourines, flatbread and wine.
They come carrying poems,
prayers, and sometimes swords –
whatever it takes to get them
through a chapter and onto the
next revelation of what it means
to have a body, know a body
and be one, upright, with you,
around the table.

“Returning People” was included in the book What A Body! published by CSS Publishing

 ...

Choosing Judah
from Genesis 49

No matter how you brace yourself,
your father’s death moves toward you
like a sirocco, steering dust and famine.
What do you want stirred before he dies?
A word of love? Respect? Or at last, just
an acknowledgement that, yes, you lived.

How quickly time has passed! As you
gather for your father’s final blessing,
the Promised Land consists of little real
estate – little more than a grave or cave
for burying, little more than an avowal
to hand down instead of deed and title,
but with that breath of blessing comes
a word from God, inherited by faith.

Judah, of all of Jacob's offspring, you
alone have shown you know a day will
come when each of you must stand
on the indwelling of a word with deed –
as though the promise is as real as
land or life or the breath of a dozen
sons and daughters. Brace yourself
for the embrace of the wind. Can
you stand to be the Father’s chosen?

"Choosing Judah” first appeared online on Catholic Exchange

 ...

 
The Object of Conversation
from Genesis 15 and Numbers 12 

They’re talking about you, Miriam. They’re
talking about how you should have married and
had a family of your own instead of hovering
over the one drawn from the water, long ago. 

They’re talking about you as though you’re
absent – as though no female prophet, past or
present, could count herself as blessed as any
man who speaks, face to face, with God.

Outside the camp of jealousy in the weak site
of leprosy, can you forgive your brother Moses
for having to intercede for you and pray when
you would prefer it to be the other way around?
Neither forgiveness nor forgetfulness will come
by your welcoming death, so save your breath!

And just so you'll know, this talk goes on and
on in Bible circles where we discuss how rivalry
erupted, corrupting your pores with your longing
to speak for God – to stand alone and yet belong
among the prophetically great leaders of the world.
So we interpret you as we see fit: appraising right,
assessing wrong, but even now we sing your song.

Jewish journal, Bridges, first published “Object of Conversation.”

...

Jesus touches the untouchable
          prayer-a-phrase from Luke 5

In a town
[yes, in town where lepers were not allowed]
a man filled with leprosy came to Jesus
and fell down onto the ground on his face -
[his pitiful face, which, maybe, had only a little left
of a nose, a lip, a chin.] 

And when he’d fallen face-down before the LORD,
he implored, “If You will,
You can heal my skin and make me clean again.” 

“I will!” Jesus said. “Be healed!”

and He reached out His immaculate hand
to touch the untouchable man.

 “Jesus Touches the Untouchable” initially appeared in Altarworks

 ...

Four Corners Come
                   from Mark 4

and the wind grows
in its wildness,
and waves rush
into the Sea of Galilee,

and old stories of swine
drowning in these
waters rise and surface, 

churning whitecaps
as Jesus calls:

“Be still. Be

still,” and the waters

calm, and you and I

will settle this in peace.

"Four Corners Come" was first published in the National Catholic Reporter

 ...

Message to Mary
     written between the lines of Matthew 28 and John 20

Her grief had killed him early,
coming like liquid into His lungs,
finishing the asphyxiation begun
on the Cross. And He felt grateful

for her not leaving Him. But
how He hated to see her, pacing,
kneeling, wailing, as she chased
away the dogs snapping at His feet.

No mother should have to see this,
He told Himself, tucking her tears
into the folds of His own body.

“It is Finished,” He cried aloud,
hoping she would hear.

She’d shown Him all a child should
know: how to hang His cloak
on a peg and roll a mat or fold blankets
so the bedding could be neatly stacked.

She would see Him again soon,
but He wished to end her grief sooner.

Taking off the shroud that bound Him
to the dead, He folded the fabric
of His funeral and left behind His linens
in the tomb for her to find.

“Message to Mary” originally appeared in The Anglican Theological Review

 ...

For You,

I turned water into wine, purified in the veins

of My own body. I climbed mountains, healed

crowds of hunger, warmed a leper’s skin. For

you I chastised leaders, halted stones, wrote on

the ground each word contained in Love.

 

I overturned unfair prices and low wages, tabled

discussions about who’s first or last, and enjoyed

the most unlikely company.

 

Before My execution, I tamed a donkey, became

your beast of burden, then bled from every pore.

 

Once for all, I buried death, and, when I arose,

some saw Me. Some heard Me as I broke through

the veil, cloaking time and eternity, and, yes,

for you, I’d do it all again.

 

Amen.

 

“For You,” previously published in Altarworks

 ...

©2021 Mary Sayler, poet-author, reviewer, pray-er, and lover of the Body of Christ in all its parts



  

July 14, 2016

Africa Study Bible

Reportedly, over 80% of the peoples in the U.S. say they’re Christians, whereas in Africa, one in four has accepted Jesus Christ as Savior. Almost 500 million Christians live in Africa, yet few have Bibles with footnotes or study aids relevant to their lives and cultures.

What’s ironic is that many key events in the Bible took place on that beautifully diverse continent. Also, its past and present peoples, places, and cultures can help us to understand more about our biblical roots and our ancestry as God’s people.

Such thoughts urged me to request a copy of the Africa Study Bible (ASB) from Oasis International, who kindly sent me their attractively published Book of Genesis to review. Its well-chosen text from the New Living Translation (NLT) was completed a few years ago, of course, by the Tyndale House Foundation, but Oasis International has not yet finalized the ASB study notes being prepared by over 300 individuals from 50 nations.

The first book, however, clearly shows how the ASB aims to bring us “God’s Word through African Eyes.” For example, “Proverbs and Stories,” applications of the text, and sidebars of “African Touch Points” give us fresh insight into Genesis, such as the note regarding “The Fall” in chapter 3:

Most parents would punish their disobedient children. The Bangolan people in Cameroon say a parent should punish a rebellious child with a rebuking left hand and draw him or her closer with a loving right hand. That is exactly what God did to humans in and after the Fall.

Below the text for the Cain and Abel story in chapter 4, “Proverbs and Stories” urge us to “Build Up, Not Tear Down” with this word:

A Sierra Leonean proverb says, ‘If a person is tallker than you, do not chop off his legs so that you will be equal. Rather, grow up’.”

Next to the biblical text for Genesis 10, an “African Touch Point” discusses the infamous “Sons of Ham” with this important clarification:

Because Ham was the father of the African people, some Christians, Jews, and Muslims have misued this passage to justify enslaving Africans. But the passage only says that Canaan is cursed. Even though the rest of Ham’s sons settled in Africa, Canaan did not. Much later, God told Israel (descendants of Noah’s son Shem) to conquer the land of Canaan, and Canaan’s descendants became servants, just as Noah had said.”

That sidebar goes on to explain:

As Africans, we are not descendants of Canaan, but of Ham’s other sons – Cush (Egypt and Sudan), Mizraim (Egypt) and Put (Libya or Somalia).”

In an “Application” for Genesis 44-50, footnotes briefly discuss Joseph's enslavement because of the harsh treatment of his jealous brothers, and yet he remained faithful to God, eventually rising to power at a crucial moment in the life of his people. By the time he saw his brothers again, he had come to recognize God's hand on his life. As the footnotes say:

Many people have assumed positions of power over those who have wronged them greatly. Some people desire to take revenge and continue the cycle of violence. Others, like Joseph forgive and say, ‘It was God who sent me here, not you’.

Forgiveness brings peace. Let us be like Joseph with people who have rejected us and caused us harm. We must not continue the cycle of violence by seeking revenge. We must see our lives as controlled by God. Only then can we be at peace.”

Yes! And may all of God's people say, "Amen."

Bible review by Mary Sayler, ©2016


Africa Study Bible, Book of John