Jack Pelham

Perhaps, at no particular hour
It might strike a man
That he has a mind
That is capable of good work,
And that good work
Might be worth the effort.

I wonder about what it will be like in Heaven,
Where there will be so much to be learned
Beyond what we have yet mastered here.

“Is this literal or figurative?”

That’s an important question to ask about any passage of scripture. Indeed, it’s fairly obvious that some things in the Bible are figurative (“I am the vine; you are the branches.”) and that some are literal (“Jesus wept.”)

And some are certainly slaves to literalism, while others recognize that both types of language are used.

Can you imagine a day
When a culture—
Long hardened against theft,
And having counted it an intolerable
Menace to society—
Should suddenly change its mind,
Congratulating itself on
Its new enlightenment—
Now heralding theft as a sacred right,
Glorifying the plight of the thieves,
Dismissing the great cost of it all
To the society,
And reviling those darkened souls
From the old school
Who still dare to complain?

It is not hard for me to
Imagine that day—
Having recently seen
Others quite like it.

When word of mouth fails
To ignite a movement
As you expected it should,
Keep in mind
That it is from the overflow
Of the heart that the mouth speaks.

In peaceful moments,
Even some pretty twisted people
Can tell the truth
And mean you well.

They are not completely broken.

When it comes to
Their drive to get what they want,
I would not put it past them
To orchestrate murders
Under the guise
Of stopping murders—

Why do they wait for the power
Of the Indwelling
To interact with their hearts and minds
When they have the inspired words
Of that self-same Spirit in print,
Wholly capable of working His power
Upon their inner beings?

You can make the many mistakes of judgment
That are germane to the painstaking process
Of solving an important puzzle completely—

Or you can make the one mistake
Of not trying to solve it.

The choices are up to you.

And then come the consequences.

Even the scholar
Runs the risk
Of missing the details
Or mistaking the connections.

He may do it less often,
But still, he does it.

The human mind
Has its vulnerabilities.