In
March 2011, a devastating tsunami struck Japan, taking nearly 16,000 lives as
it obliterated towns and villages along the coast. Writer and poet Gretel
Erlich visited Japan to witness and document the destruction. When she felt
inadequate to report what she was seeing, she wrote a poem about it. In a PBS
NewsHour interview she said, “My old friend William Stafford, a poet now gone,
said, ‘A poem is an emergency of the spirit.’”
We
find poetry used throughout the Bible to express deep emotion, ranging from
joyful praise to anguished loss. When King Saul and his son Jonathan were
killed in battle, David was overwhelmed with grief (2 Sam. 1:1-12). He poured
out his soul in a poem he called “the Song of the Bow”: “Saul and Jonathan were
beloved and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.
. . . How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle! . . . I am
distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; you have been very pleasant to me”
(vv.23-26).
When
we face “an emergency of the spirit”—whether glad or sad—our prayers can be a
poem to the Lord. While we may stumble to articulate what we feel, our heavenly
Father hears our words as a true expression of our hearts.
God
does more than hear words; He reads hearts. (RBC)
