poetry

THE ONLY SAVIOUR OF SINNERS When Christ was born, via a virgin birth The skies were filled with angelic mirth Who couldn’t give praise, or not be thrilled? The ancient prophecies were now fulfilled And central to redemption’s plan The Son of God was born a man He came from heaven, to earth to dwell...

Melito of Sardis – Pastor, Theologian, and Poet Melito is not a familiar name today. Until the last century, we could only find a mention of him in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History , mostly in connection with the controversy over the day in which the feast of Pascha (Easter) was to be celebrated...

Bian Yunbo – A Poet for the Unknown Christian When, in 1943, Japanese soldiers occupied a rural area of the province of Hebei, China, eighteen-year-old Bian Yunbo walked over six hundred miles south-east to Yang County, where a high school accepted refugee students. There, he first heard the gospel...

Hallgrímur Pétursson – Iceland’s Poet of Comfort The news that Hallgrímur Pétursson was ordained as Lutheran minister at Hvalsnes, Iceland, raised many eyebrows. He had not completed his education and, what was worse, he had fathered a child out of wedlock. But Brynjólfur Sveinsson, bishop of...

Ann Griffiths and Her Sea of Wonders “O to spend my life in a sea of wonders!” [1] Ann wrote in one of her poems. And her life, spent in a Welsh farm in the small village of Dolwar-Fach, was lived in the constant and exciting discovery of God’s revelation. A Short and Intense Life Born in 1776 to a...

George Herbert – Pastor and Poet What would the English poet George Herbert have to say at the toppling of our monuments? Maybe something similar to what he said in 1633, while contemplating the monuments to the dead inside his church’s crypt. In the end, he concluded, the dust and earth to which...

Kassia – A Bold and Sensitive Byzantine Poet Around the year 830, in Constantinople, that Byzantine Empress Euphroshyne organized a bride-show to find a wife for her newly-crowned sixteen-year old son Theophilos. This was a common match-making system of her times. Kassia – possibly 20 at that time...

John Donne – Poet of Grace and Comfort In 1623, when a sudden illness brought the poet and preacher John Donne close to death, he expressed his lament with words that may sound relevant during our coronavirus pandemic: “Variable and therefore miserable condition of man! This minute I was well, and...