clcouch123

After Reading, There Were Crafts

 

This time and long ago

I was learning Bible stories

The story I remember best

Is the one in which the prophet

Was tested via

The priests of Ba’al

Elijah was a good one

So the contest went his way

We know where Jehovah sets

With the faithful,

Which is with the faithful

 

When I read on my own,

I learned much more about

The prophets who were not so good

The Bible told me so

Deborah and Gideon turn out

To be exceptions

Not to mention all the kings,

I think,

Who came into being against

Jehovah’s wishes, anyway

Against God?

Who would do such a thing

Who knew the Lord so closely?

Does it breed contempt,

After all?

 

Solomon was prosperous

David was loved

Though there was ruin in his

Realm and by his hand

War, deceit, rebellion, adultery,

And murder

Yet when Absalom was killed

Left hanging in a tree

(such an image),

I wonder if God did not weep

With David, waiting by the gate

For a better word

 

The lesson was extended into

Something with our hands

I remember best all the burdened-out matches

Glued to a cardboard shape

To make a cross

A cross requiring so much

Extinguishment of light to have

Now the finished product better lay

Against the wall

As a reading for Good Friday

 

C L Couch

 

 

Community Archives – HC02495, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76993143

Photograph by Robert McCormick of Belleville, Ontario, showing Mary Ritchie (lived 1842-1929, formerly Mary Holden) and her Sunday School class from the John Street Church, Belleville.