The Holy Poetry

Prose and poetry both tell their stories, but in such different ways.  Prose fills up all the white spaces with orderly nouns and pronouns, adjectives and adverbs, precise sentences and flowing paragraphs.  Prose fills in the gaps not only on the page, but also in the telling the words seek to do.  Leaving nothing to the unknown, prose creates an idea and drives it home as a hammer drives a nail into waiting wood.  Poetry, on the other hand, loves the white space.  It leaves plenty of it beneath the words which are as illusive as cloud covered images and head scratching mystery.  Poetry creates the images with the words and trusts the reader to take the invisible and make it visible.   

Maybe this is part of the reason most folks who read the Word of God find themselves drawn to those Old Testament words known as the Psalms.  The Psalms are filled with the images of poetry and the white spaces underneath that declare that mystery is present.  And, mystery is present.  But, it is not the mystery of the "who dun it" books for there is no mistaking who has done it.  There is no mistaking the One who is shrouded in mystery and beckons us to use all our senses to know Him, to see Him, and to hear Him.  The Psalms call us to encounter the Holy One not with our heads, but with our hearts.  They invite us not to intellectual reasoning, but to crying tears of sorrow and to wild exhuberant dancing in the streets of our soul.    

I am grateful to my mother for introducing me to these powerful words when I was just a boy trying to memorize the words to please her, later to earn a star on a memory achievement poster at church, and even later to bring holy comfort to the struggles of my spirit and the spirits of others.  So many of the words and phrases of those Psalms have been carried with me in a book that has always been open in the innermost regions of my heart.  They have encouraged me.  They have caused me to raise my hand to receive blessings and offer praise.  They have been the blood and breath of my life and I am forever grateful for the Holy Inspirer of that poetry created for the soul.