Monday, February 25, 2013

Guest Poet

The voice of Edgar Guest sounds a lot like that of my Daddy and Momma's voices.  I guess that is why I have such an affinity towards his poetry.  I also like the down home dialect he often employs, it's funny and powerful.  He gives the simple, ordinary life an elegance of hope and weight.  Life and love is not mostly lived in lofty towers but in little two and three bedrooms house all around the towns and cities.
If Cowper shouts at eternal truths, and Milton explains their origins, Guest smacks of daily bread and living out the physicality of worship - he takes Cowper and Milton's orthodoxy all the way home to orthopraxy.  I like him. 
I'll be posting a little run on Guest's poetry, because as Andrew Peterson, so poignantly states it, "they were singing out my song, when the song in me had died.' My voice is a little reclusive these days, so I'll borrow the words of others as  my own repertoire of praise, at least for awhile.

When he has more than he can eat
To feed a stranger's not a feat.
 
When he has more than he can spend
It isn't hard to give or lend.

Who gives but what he'll never miss
Will never know what giving is.

He'll win few praises from his Lord
Who does but what he can afford.
 
The widow's mite to heaven went
Because real sacrifice it meant.
                        -Edgar Guest, "Sacrifice"

 
I love the challenge of giving in all areas - you don't know you've given until you feel the loss.  That loss comes in manifest in suffering and when the dross of it all is scraped, you are left with joy.  Loss and suffering is a teeny, tiny, itty bit of what Christ did for us - and we get to share in that with Him. Now there is something to be thankful for... a good bit thankful, indeed.
 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is lovely Jojo.
God bless you today sister.