Friday Everything: Advent Poem

Every year, Pastor John reads, during each of the four Sundays of Advent, an advent poem that he has written as a gift for our congregation. They are quite good. This year, the story is about Ruth.

Everything I Ever Needed To Know I Learned From John Piper’s Ruth Advent Poem

 

My daddy’s always making rhymes but they’re not very good — sometimes. *** It better satisfies the ear to close the eye.  *** It blunts the beauty of a thing to feel a rival pleasure make appeal  *** The story starts with God, as all true stories do. *** None could stay his hand, or make undone the deed of God. He had his aims. *** God names whom he will have, and moves the earth to bring them to himself. *** No price paid to her gods of wood and stone could ever cleanse her heart, atone for sin, or satisfy the just and holy claims of God. Sheer dust upon the scales, all this, to weigh against idolatry each day. *** The hand of God is very roundabout, and there is time and room to doubt at every turn.  *** Clean and upright boys will never sleep with girls until the day they keep one woman for a wife. Beware, young man, no commoners should dare, nor even kings, to break this law. *** The broken saint just took them in without complaint, and from her lips and from her way they met her God and learned to pray. *** Could be, my good grandson,that you will sing, and put the truth on wing with harp and psalm and song. *** I pray that bitter providence today, tomorrow will taste very sweet, and every famine that we meet and every broken staff of bread in death, will bring us life instead.