Jack Pelham

If you call yourself a student of the Bible,
I’m going to want to hear
What you are puzzling to figure out next
And what you’re just dying to know
And where you’re pretty sure you have
Gotten it wrong in the past.

I can ask a question that would bring the religious world to a screeching halt if it were to give it
due consideration. And no, it’s not about whether God exists; it’s about whether he really answers prayer as he is widely assumed (across many religions) to be doing.

Is it really what time we think it is? Are the promises that we Christians cling to in the Bible really as far-reaching as we think they are? And were they really intended for us and for our time?

Even the wicked
Are in favor of righteousness
When it happens to be of benefit to them.
But bind their wicked hands with
The cord of righteousness
And see how they hate it!

One thing about time is that
It does run out.

There comes a day when
The long-assumed good intention
Becomes impossible to carry out—
When adjustments
Can no longer be made—
When remedies can no longer
Be applied—
When important things
Can no longer be said.

He was so sure
That the Holy Spirit
Was leading him in the thing,
Prompting him to act,
Making the scriptures clear
In his mind,
And driving his conviction—
As it had done for the heroes
In Bible times.

What if humans on the whole
Were so dull at thinking
That God from time to time
Had to create an agitated soul
With a freakish obsession for
Identifying and solving puzzles,
Just to keep an ember of
Enthusiastic cognition
Aglow on the Earth?

I notice that I get more support
When I am writing to rebuke
Some widely-hated evil
Than when writing to promote
Some widely-neglected good.

Among the stark and sad realities of this world—
Among the hindrances and frustrations that
Stand in our way and menace us so—
One will surely find his own self.

So, I was wondering:
Would if really be so bad
If you were to go get some help
And actually overcome that obstacle?

His life is wounded
By those times at which
He abandoned something good—
Whether just-begun, long-practiced,
Or merely considered-once—
Because it was rejected
Either by decree of
His thoughts or
His emotions.