Compare and Contrast

I last posted William Blake’s poem “Night”. Blake is a visionary. It’s not even proper to call him a lyrical poet, though most of his poetry is lyrical enough. He is mystical and prophetic. His poetry is not meant to teach you anything, but to awaken you and open your eyes.

For an interesting contrast, consider the following poem by the most respected and renowned American poet of the 19th century, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Most of us older folks were exposed to Longfellow’s works like “The Song of Hiawatha” and “The Village Blacksmith” in school, and some of us memorized “Paul Revere’s Ride”. For all his good technical qualities, Longfellow eventually fell out of favor. He was often dismissed as didactic and lacking in passion. I suppose it’s hard to deny the didacticism, especially if we’re contrasting him to someone like Blake or even Whitman. Still, every good poet has his place. If poetry were baseball, Longfellow might be the stolid cleanup hitter Gehrig to Blake’s Ruth or Whitman’s Dizzy Dean.

I have no doubt that George MacDonald or G. K. Chesterton would prefer Blake with his flavor of wildness over someone like Longfellow, but, as much as we love meat, a glass of milk is often just the thing late at night.

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"THE BELEAGUERED CITY" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have read, in some old, marvellous tale,
Some legend strange and vague,
That a midnight host of spectres pale
Beleaguered the walls of Prague.

Beside the Moldau's rushing stream,
With the wan moon overhead,
There stood, as in an awful dream,
The army of the dead.

White as a sea-fog, landward bound,
The spectral camp was seen,
And, with a sorrowful, deep sound,
The river flowed between.

No other voice nor sound was there,
No drum, nor sentry's pace;
The mist-like banners clasped the air,
As clouds with clouds embrace.

But when the old cathedral bell
Proclaimed the morning prayer,
The white pavilions rose and fell
On the alarmed air.

Down the broad valley fast and far
The troubled army fled;
Up rose the glorious morning star,
The ghastly host was dead.

I have read, in the marvellous heart of man,
That strange and mystic scroll,
That an army of phantoms vast and wan
Beleaguer the human soul.

Encamped beside Life's rushing stream,
In Fancy's misty light,
Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam
Portentous through the night.

Upon its midnight battle-ground
The spectral camp is seen,
And, with a sorrowful, deep sound,
Flows the River of Life between.

No other voice nor sound is there,
In the army of the grave;
No other challenge breaks the air,
But the rushing of Life's wave.

And when the solemn and deep churchbell
Entreats the soul to pray,
The midnight phantoms feel the spell,
The shadows sweep away.

Down the broad Vale of Tears afar
The spectral camp is fled;
Faith shineth as a morning star,
Our ghastly fears are dead.

Angels on the Night Shift

"NIGHT" by William Blake

The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,
And I must seek for mine.
The moon, like a flower
In heaven's high bower,
With silent delight,
Sits and smiles on the night.

Farewell, green fields and happy grove,
Where flocks have ta'en delight.
Where lambs have nibbled, silent move
The feet of angels bright;
Unseen they pour blessing,
And joy without ceasing,
On each bud and blossom,
And each sleeping bosom.

They look in every thoughtless nest
Where birds are covered warm;
They visit caves of every beast,
To keep them all from harm:
If they see any weeping
That should have been sleeping,
They pour sleep on their head,
And sit down by their bed.

When wolves and tigers howl for prey,
They pitying stand and weep;
Seeking to drive their thirst away,
And keep them from the sheep.
But, if they rush dreadful,
The angels, most heedful,
Receive each mild spirit,
New worlds to inherit.


And there the lion's ruddy eyes
Shall flow with tears of gold:
And pitying the tender cries,
And walking round the fold:
Saying: "Wrath by His meekness,
And, by His health, sickness,
Are driven away
From our immortal day.

"And now beside thee, bleating lamb,
I can lie down and sleep,
Or think on Him who bore thy name,
Graze after thee, and weep.
For, washed in life's river,
My bright mane for ever
Shall shine like the gold,
As I guard o'er the fold."

Some Words Are More Equal Than Others

For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels – Mark 8:38

What struck me about this is the position to which the Lord elevates what He says, His words. Don’t be ashamed of Me but also don’t be ashamed of what I say. It does not matter if what He says is a little challenging, a little convicting, even a little embarrassing at times. Sure I love Jesus, the Good Shepherd, the Wonderful, the Counselor, the Prince of Peace. As much as I embrace Him, I have to embrace all that He says.

I don’t think I ever stumbled over the Person of Jesus. I could always accept Him as the Son of God. Cool. Where I ran into problems was when He started talking about the poor being blessed and the rich having a hard time getting into heaven. I have trouble with Him telling me to turn the other cheek, take an insult and go on, go the extra mile for those who would oppress and humiliate me. I have trouble with seeking the kingdom and thinking I won’t have to worry about anything else. I don’t always want to hear that I have to forgive if I expect to be forgiven.

When Jesus began to talk about the necessity of eating His flesh and drinking His blood it so shocked and offended many of His followers that they left Him. Even His chosen disciples were confused by it. In fact, they were probably ashamed of what He was saying. He sounded like a mad man. They must have wondered how they were going to build a messianic kingdom with a Messiah who said such outrageous things. The crowds were falling away; it would cut in the offerings. Things might get tight.

Jesus equates His words with Himself. There is no question that we must believe in Christ, but He makes it clear that we must also believe what He says. It just makes sense in a way. If the Son of God is talking to you it would probably be a good idea to pay attention. Actions may speak louder than words for the average person, but God’s words are powerful and creative in themselves. They possess the power of illumination allowing us to discover reality as it really is.

When we hear the words of Jesus, we begin to understand Him, but we also begin to understand ourselves and the world we inhabit. Most of the time, we tend to focus on where we fall short in relation to what Jesus says. Conviction is good. It helps get us on the right track. But the words of Christ are not merely admonitions or clever proverbs to encourage us to behave better. Like the creative words of God in the beginning, the words of Christ are creative in us. Once we hear the words of the Lord, we are changed, and it is a change into newness. We became new creatures, as Paul says, sloughing off the old and being transformed into His image of us.

How can we continue to worry when we hear Jesus say, “Consider the lilies …”? How can we doubt when He says that all things are possible to him who believes? How can we continue to live in bondage when we hear Him say that we are free, indeed?

Not every time that I read the Bible do I hear Jesus speak. Sometimes I’m just reading and thinking and there’s not much happening. Maybe something is being sown or watered, I don’t know. But there are occasions where the words take on a life of their own, and I would hear them no more clearly if the Lord spoke to me in an audible voice. Reading and studying is good and beneficial no matter what else happens. If God spoke with such clarity every time we opened the book, we might become like the Israelites, “…[L]et not God speak with us, lest we die” (Exodus 20:19). There is such a thing as too much light all at once. He knows us and knows how much we can handle, and He speaks accordingly. All He asks is that we not be ashamed of the words we hear.

You May Have Heard of This One

"There Will Come Soft Rains" -- Sara Teasdale

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

A Poem About Poetry

"Poetry” by Marianne Moore

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important
beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it,
one discovers that there is in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not be-
cause a

high sounding interpretation can be put upon them
but because they are
useful; when they become so derivative as to
become unintelligible, the
same thing may be said for all of us – that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand. The bat,
holding on upside down or in quest of some-
thing to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll,
a tireless wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twinkling his skin like a
horse that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician – case after case
could be cited did
one wish it; nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents
and

school-books"; all these phenomena are important.
One must make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half
poets,
the result is not poetry,
nor till the autocrats among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination" – above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads
in them, shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on one hand,
in defiance of their opinion –
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness, and
that which is on the other hand,
genuine, then you are interested in poetry.

Second Story Man

When He entered Capernaum again after some days, it was reported that He was at home. So many people gathered together that there was no more room, not even in the doorway, and He was speaking the message to them. Then they came to Him bringing a paralytic, carried by four men. Since they were not able to bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above where He was. And when they had broken through, they lowered the stretcher on which the paralytic was lying.

Seeing their faith, Jesus told the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” -- Mark 2:1-5

This became a favorite passage for me one Sunday night down in a little town south of Fort Worth. We had shown up at church along with the rest of the very small congregation back in those pre-cellphone or at least pre-ubiquitous-cellphone days. The word came just as the service was to begin that the pastor and his family had an emergency requiring immediate attention. In a larger church that would have been no problem. In our little group, the pastor, his wife, and daughter were the entirety of the staff as well as the musicians and choir. We had no actual deacons or associate pastors. My only status was that of FOTP (friend of the pastor). We weren’t even technically members of that church. Still, rather than send everyone home or to one of the other local churches, my wife suggested I grab a music stand (as opposed to the pulpit) and start talking. We had one older lady with a beautiful and loud singing voice, and I asked her if she could lead us in a couple of a cappella songs. While she did that, I opened my Bible, which just happened to open to Mark 2.

For someone forced to speak extemporaneously and with no preparation time, the great thing about this story is its visual character. We can see those four friends hauling their buddy down the street, coming up against the loose fringe of the human mass, pushing forward a little then realizing that advance is hopeless. We can imagine them retreating and regrouping. One says we might as well give this up. Maybe we can catch Jesus tomorrow. Another is reluctant saying that their paralyzed friend was suffering and needs help today. And besides I have to shear sheep tomorrow. Three of them are arguing about the obstacles and the impossibility of the situation. But one guy is standing there just staring at the roof. Finally, when the thought is fully formed, he voices his suggestion. The other three are a little skeptical at first, but, as they ponder it, they begin to smile. It just might work.

A desperately unprepared person can use this quality of the narrative to draw in the listeners while creating both time and verbal space to pick up a salient point for teaching or inspiring, and this little passage is loaded with them: unity of purpose and the power of teamwork, persistence in the face of difficulty, the reality that sometimes none of us can make it alone, where there is a will there is a way, or the fact that Jesus won’t reject you just because you don’t come in the front door – just to mention the obvious.

The one that always jumps out at me first is that the four men carrying that stretcher must have loved their helpless, paralyzed brother and believed beyond all reason that Jesus was capable of restoring him. It says that Jesus saw their faith, but He also saw their love, their willingness to try anything to get to the Lord – not for their own benefit, but for the sake of someone else. The paralyzed man may not have been a particularly good person. We don’t know. He may have been just like us. After all, Jesus had to tell him his sins were forgiven before he could be healed. We don’t know if the four stretcher-bearers were part of the man’s family, some friends, or maybe they were just people who had gotten caught up in the moment, saw a crippled guy and wondered if Jesus could heal that one. The Spirit can work with most anything, and it was the Holy Spirit who grabbed those men and set them off.

I see, too, that Jesus didn’t have to ask them, as He often did with others, if they believed. He could see their faith – as James says, “I’ll show you my faith by my works.” These guys were the epitome of that statement. They didn’t hang back and say, “Well, let’s just pray and believe that old Sam here will be delivered and healed.” They pushed and pulled and sweated and maybe even cussed a little. I’m guessing these weren’t structures with high ceilings. Nevertheless, getting the deadweight of a person on cot onto a roof then down through a roof is work, not to mention tearing away the shingles or thatch or whatever it was they had to get through. Sometimes faith is manifested in simple acceptance of the word -- like the centurion in Luke chapter 7, but sometimes it must be evidenced by a depleted bank account when we give until it hurts or seen in broken blisters or felt in aching muscles when we press on through the pain.

The man on the cot is all of us. His paralysis is a picture of the human will in bondage. We are powerless to do anything for ourselves. Sometimes we know too well the path we took to this place. For others it appears they were simply born in their helpless states. No matter how we happened to get here, the only hope we have for freedom from our condition is Jesus. But what can we do? The New Testament gives us various illustrations. In some cases, seemingly out of the blue, like the man at the Pool of Bethesda in John 5, Jesus comes to us and asks us if we want to be healed. Other times, like Jairus’ daughter or Lazarus, someone may carry the word of our need to Jesus and implore Him to visit us. Or, someone may pick us up and carry us to Him.


That last method is work always because it involves close and sustained contact between the bearer and the borne. These that we carry are the impotent among are friends, family, and the people with whom we work. We have to live our lives consistently and persistently if we are going to get them past the many obstacles, past the hypocritical and hypercritical crowds. When our way is blocked, we can’t make it a one-man operation. We may need help. We may need to step back and think about a new approach, and we cannot be overly sensitive about offending anyone or anything that gets in the way.

Illusions of the Grave Cave

The twelve gates are twelve pearls; each individual gate was made of a single pearl. The broad street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. – Revelation 21:21

Abraham lived in tents because he was looking for a city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God (Hebrews 11:9-10). When Moses was told to build the Tabernacle, he was instructed to make the Holy of Holies a perfect cube of ten cubits, about fifteen feet high, wide and deep – to house the Ark of the Covenant on which God’s Presence dwelt. The City of God as described in Revelation is a cube as well, though a massive one – fifteen hundred miles across and high. The Lord seems to be telling us that His city, the kingdom, or heaven is very much a Most Holy Sanctuary wherein His Presence truly dwells. The size of the city hints at the grandeur and majesty of God. All the gold and the pearl gates and the twelve foundations of glorious stones are elements reflected in the types Moses created for the Tabernacle and the priestly attire of Aaron.

Consider for a moment that good, old-fashioned and endangered incandescent light bulb. In its small, humble way, it is a little like the sun, for it burns, giving off light and some heat. Still, if I were to say to someone who is unfamiliar with light bulbs that they are like the sun, when that person saw a bulb for himself, he might be justifiably disappointed. On the other hand, suppose somewhere a person lived who was familiar with the various kinds of artificial light sources but had never seen the sun, the moon, or the stars. Perhaps he is a cave-dweller living an exclusively subterranean existence. If we met this denizen of the caverns and began to tell him of the great light that illuminates the world, we might compare it to one of his little light. We might tell him to imagine a huge floodlight set high above his head. We might be poetic, eloquent and inspired in our description, yet when he saw the sun with his own blinking, shuttered, aching eyes, he would be stunned by the reality. No description could prepare him for the brilliance of the light or the burning heat of a deep summer day.

“Our God is a consuming fire” – You may have looked into the heart of a live volcano, but it will seem a tea candle compared to the fire of God. “Jesus is the light of the world” – We will know that metaphor for the pitiful thing it is when we face Him and, like John the Revelator, fall helpless at His feet unable to bear the brightness of His visage. We will know gold, pearls, and diamonds for the weak comparisons they are when we see the living Sanctuary in all its glory.

Even when we are blessed with glimpses through the fog, when we see a flash of glory in a dream or a vision, when our eyes are opened and we see “the chariots and horsemen of God” or “His train filling the temple”, it is hard to hang on to it. Others will tell us we have an overactive imagination. They will say we are extrapolating from the ‘real’ – the cave-dweller might say the same thing about our ‘sun’, if he never ventured to ascend. Someone will tell us that we just believe in such things because we want them to be so. In a way, that, at least, is true – except these are not self-indulgent, self-glorifying daydreams. If we think of self at all in the face of that glory it is to recognize our unworthiness and be humbled. Again, as my friend Eddie said, God will not allow us to think better of Him than He can be to us. He will not show us visions of stars when all He has to give us are 40-watt bulbs. If my dreams exceed the limitations of the world, then it is the world that needs to be cracked open.