Friday Everything: Ruth Advent Poem 2

Everything I Ever Needed To Know I Learned From

Pastor Piper’s Advent Poem – Ruth (Part 2 and 3)

 

Just grief? It seems to me that God was doing more. *** Sometimes creed can’t keep up with the speed of pain, and has to make the meaning plain when suffering slows down. *** The day would come when tortoise faith would catch the bounding hare of pain and match his power, not his pace, and win. Judge not from how the two begin. *** A servant in the loft and two old men can manage with a fox’s den  *** Should the sin of Lot destroy the good for every generation, then there is no good in any men. *** Think with care, Lest you forget. *** Incest is not unique to Moabites. *** Pick your people, tongue, or tribe, for none is pure from disrepute, not one. *** Meanwhile in the darkness here, where tribes and races hate and fear, O Lord, let Bethlehem ignite a flame of truth, and let us fight with love and joy to make it plain that fam’ly links are not a chain, and origins do not control. *** Half images are not the whole, nor true, and take a rending toll. *** Beneath the skin there is a soul. And may we lift this light and truth for Boaz and for every Ruth. *** There is a debt to parentage that one can feel. *** It is not love to trade for grain your God.  *** I will not suck with these the breast of foreign deities. I’d rather starve beneath the wings of God, than live with foreign kings. *** Our God is on your side. *** This very hour God makes the sin of man, with power, to serve your faithfulness. *** I’d rather live beneath the wing of God, or die there, if I must, than try to save my life by trust in my own plans.