God's Book of Poetry

We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them

(Ephesians 2:10)

I’m sometimes asked when and how I started writing poetry.  Ever since I can remember, I have made up rhymes to express my feelings.  But it wasn’t until my junior year of high school when an English teacher taught us how to write English Verse, that I learned how to put my thoughts into repeating rhythm and rhyme patterns, unlocking the ability I had unknowingly desired.  Since then I have written hundreds of poems using a personalized form of English Verse.

My dad used to say that nothing is hard if you know how.  Although that didn’t always make sense in my younger days, I have found it to be true.  Though there are exceptions to the rule — for instance I never was able to master the piano in spite of lessons and practice — it is true of writing English Verse.

In past years, I conducted week long workshops, teaching 5th and 6th graders in a public school, as well as adults in the general public, how to write in this style of poetry. With few exceptions, most were as happy as I was to discover they had the ability to use this form of expression.

Whether or not you have ever written a poem, or desired to, if you are a born-again child of God, you are a poem in His Book of Poetry.

In his letter to the believers in the church of Ephesus, Paul told them that they were God’s workmanship.  The word he used was poiema, the word from which we get the English word poem.

Several places in the Revelation refer to the Lamb’s Book of Life which contains the names of those who have accepted Jesus Christ’s sacrificial death as the substitutional penalty for their sins.  At the moment of salvation, the Holy Spirit enters the inner (spiritual) being of the believer where He resides as a guarantee of membership in God’s family/kingdom, and that person’s name is written into God’s Book of Poetry.

Each of God’s poems is created in a unique way, capable of doing whatever it is God plans for them to do.  As we yield ourselves to His will, we fit into the rhythm and rhyme He has in mind.

Knowing God’s intended purpose, like my dad said, if easy when we know how.  Learning His will in the matter comes about as we read His Word, talk to Him in prayer, and are sensitive to the urging of His Holy Spirit.  Because He has gifted us to be capable of doing what He has in mind, it is often surprising to discover that it is the very thing(s) which come easiest and most naturally to us. And it is always rewarding to use those things to serve Him.

Lord, thank You that You’ve called us
to be members of Your clan;
gifted and quite naturally
to fit into You plan.
Help us have the courage
to accept the way we’re made,
so we will always serve You,
and never be afraid.
Give courage where we lack it;
shape us in Your way;
poems in Your precious Book,
written in Your way.

Glenda Collins Inman