Understanding the gospel¹ of Jesus Christ can be compared to understanding a tree. From a distance, it’s easy for a child to understand—how the trunk holds up the branches and the branches the leaves, how it’s strong enough to hold a person from its branches, rooted enough to provide safety from a flood.

Yet as simple as it is to take in from a distance, a whole lifetime could be spent in the tree—observing the patterns and textures of the bark, how the trunk’s rings form, how the roots penetrate the earth, how the branches split and what patterns they form, the leaves and their veins and how the chlorophyll ebbs and flows through the seasons, experiencing the textures of each, observing the fruit and the seeds within the fruit, tasting and enjoying the sweetness, living in and understanding the beauty and richness of how the lifecycle operates…and clinging to it (Him) over and over again as the floods of life sweep through.

And that just scratches the surface. The fullness of Christ is more grandiose than the sequoia and far more voluminous than any one lifetime can comprehend.

This site contains poetry I have written (and am writing) during my time spent in that tree. I seek to conform my poetry with the Christian scriptures and to let it flow from my experience of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Poetry in resonance with creation and the Word

In resonance with creation. If humans were not worshipping their Creator by singing songs, writing poems, providing for the poor, parenting children well, offering medical care, doing thoughtful science, being faithful neighbors, nursing infants, doing honest accounting, constructing good houses, being attorneys, repairing cars well, playing outdoors, dancing…the rest of creation would cry out instead². May our living poetry be an expression of what the stones already know.

In resonance with the Word. For Christ-followers past and present, the scriptures—the Word of God—are a solid rock to stand upon. More incredibly, Jesus Christ Himself is called the Word³ and our cornerstone⁴. May our living poetry remain anchored to the Word and follow the pattern of the cornerstone who is Christ.

Footnotes

1. Gospel means “good news.”

2. “He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.'” – Luke 19:40

3. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” – John 1:1-3

4. “Have you not read this Scripture: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone…'” – Mark 12:10