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Monday, September 23, 2019

We Are Who/What We Read...


 What/Who are you reading these days?
I was suddenly struck anew by how deeply we are influenced/affected by what we read!
 (or who we listen to, often reading/quoting what someone else wrote)

In Jesus' final prayer before He went to the cross He prayed,
 I have given them Your word and the world has hated them; 
for they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
I am not asking that You take them out of the world, 
but that You keep them from the evil one. 
 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
"Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth."
As You sent Me into the world, I have also sent them into the world.
For them I sanctify Myself, so that they too may be sanctified by the truth.
I am not asking on behalf of them alone,
but also on behalf of those who will believe in Me through their message,
that all of them may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I am in You. 
May they also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. 

No matter how many books we collect and read...

 ...if we miss God's book we've missed it all!


They say so much; these teeny twists of ink turned into jot
They arrange on a barren page the images of thought
To touch the reader of the written word with much to tell
And just as ‘we are what we eat’ thus, what we read as well

The Moral Law of right and wrong instills a hounding need
To find, for sake of peace of mind, The Truth; and so we read
But all the greatest authors with The Latest Modern Whim
Can never change The First and Final Word written by Him

Debates of truth and reason fill many a musty tome
The living soul creates a Whole/hole, nay, mammoth astrodome
For Truth is Absolute; and till doubt’s dispute is destroyed
Nothing, no matter what we read or write will fill its void

Ah, wishful thinking seeks colleagues, when nursed to dogged thirst
God’s Truth is not a pillow concerned about comfort first
His Word is undeterred; though wheedling nature of mere men
Will try to barter with His truth through think-twists from a pen

…for the imagination is a wondrous, wily Force
It fosters the creation of many a fine discourse
And if we are not well-versed in the Truth, then, me oh my
We might exchange it for a well-dressed stranger’s valid lie

Hail, to the theologians and scholars; how much you read
The college of the mind is such a large classroom to feed
Yet fathoms of ‘sound knowledge’ cannot rearrange the Truth
And facts are stubborn subjects in spite of progressive youth

If we dismiss The One who holds the keys of death and hell
We miss it all; for God’s Word is a never-ending well
Where, after we believe, then Truth will affirm theory
For nothing else we read exceeds Supreme Author-ity

‘Without faith it is impossible to please Holy God’
Without His Word ignorance feasts on many a feckless fraud
But through His Word the evidence of things we cannot see
Nurtures man’s mustard seed-sized faith to a deep-rooted tree

They say so much; these teeny twists of ink turned into jot
They quicken, with written homage, the aptitude of thought
To fill the theater of Think, with much, so much to tell
And just as ‘we are what we eat’ thus, what we read as well

© Janet Martin

 Matthew 12:3 He answered, “Haven’t you read...?


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