Poet's Shed: Week 10
Poetry readings to give inspiration and encouragement.
Written and read by Frank Scammell
Leaving the Sheep, The Best Wine, and The Patient Potter
Week 10 – 2nd June 2020
written and read by Frank Scammell
Leaving the Sheep
Lift high the join of birth and pain.
Proclaim God’s greatness in manger shed,
Divinity squeezed into crying child,
Time’s pinnacle ignored by passing press.
Am I a shepherd, smelly, earthy
Stopped in tracks by angel’s word ?
Am I a wise child called to journey
Faithful, patient, searching still
To worship God packed in miniature,
Bringing gifts wealth can’t contain?
Here is light that brightens darkness.
Here is meaning where no meaning’s found.
Here is life that death can’t conquer.
Here is hope when all seems lost.
Here is strength that’s couched in weakness.
Here is gift beyond all cost.
The Best Wine
What can be good about old age?
When knees swell and hips grate.
When memory loses present truth.
You question who you really are.
When people fail to see the youth who lies within.
Let Simeon and Anna challenge
All that heaviness and negativity.
For their cataract eyes begin to see
God’s truth in high definition clarity.
For old age can be God’s time for encounter.
The Saviour never so close as now.
They tell, they speak and prophesy
Words that cut sword like to the heart.
What can be good about old age?
Know this! He’s saved the best till now.
The Patient Potter
Thrown down on potter’s wheel
Again and again and again.
A sorry sight of splatted clay
Saved by God’s repeated word
Seventy five, seventy six, seventy seven.
Why am I so slow to see
The design the potter had in mind
From before the start of time.
His creative grasp is loving, gentle
Raising me up in turning beauty.
His gift is pattern, form and purpose,
Not something I could earn.
Not all at once but slowly
An image starts to form
Miraculous, Christlike and holy.