Best Missionaries Poems
Freezing water.
Many hours.
Prayer, hymns, and laughter.
Gray fins begin circling our group.
Day Three There are thirteen of us now.
Twenty-six numb legs stop moving.
Hymn singing stops.
Who will be next? I hold my breath.
Goliath is taken.
Pulled away from the circle.
His girlfriend screams.
Goliath makes no sound. Gives me a sad nod.
I watch in morbid curiousness
As he is pulled under the water hard.
The water fills with vast amount of red liquid.
Frenzied sharks swim in for their taste of the kill.
The rest of us hold our breaths.
The third day of our capsized non-rescue.
The ocean is deep. Eight others had already been taken.
Which is easier – to be taken or to watch those taken?
The sharks swim around us one more time.
We who are left give praise for another hour
Of life, each minute a reminder of how quickly
We are taken. Tears in our eyes. Who will tell our tale?
“Serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears, and temptations…” Acts 20:19 of the King James Version
Fulfilling God’s perfect will from the heart
Yielded to advance the kingdom of Christ
They are missionaries who did their part
Serving the Lord while graciously sufficed…
Called to minister, Gospel they did share
Propelled by compassion, loving kindness
Divine wisdom, peaceful zeal, mercy-deed
Preaching, teaching Scriptures of prudent care
Nourishing souls midst guided gentleness
For redemption seal with ardent faith creed.
Soldiers of Christ championed truth and right
Endured, persevered along patience-race
Discipling converts through biblical light
Toward holiness’ walk of virtue-brace…
Gratefully labouring with divine zest
Though human nature battled against guilt
Confessing, repenting, pressing on still
Serenely vanquishing transgression pest
Drawing nigh to God’s altar, pardon-built
Sublime course, blissfully they did fulfill.
In their pastoral work where they did toil
The Saviour’s exaltation, their aim
Anointed by the Holy Spirit’s oil
For triumphant goal, hailing Master’s name…
Encountering struggle, suffering, pain
Attacked by temptation, trial, hardship
Gripped with heartache causing grief and sorrow
Those God-called trod on selflessness’ terrain
Ordained to practice faithful stewardship
Exuding radiance of service-glow.
May 17, 2022
2nd place, "Form O- Ode- New Poems" Poetry Writing Contest
Sponsored by Constance La France; judged on 6/1/2022.
And, as I began to play the tune, the power of the words from my song, “There is Healing in His Hands”, miracles began to happen all over the sanctuary and so I just continued to sing. The first announced miracle was a young mother who brought her baby son over to grandpa. The baby had been born with a skin disease. He had a severe rash all his tiny little body but now, his skin was all clear and smooth the way a baby’s skin should be. Before she sat down, a man with severe heart disease felt warmth come across his heart and then he noticed his heart beat was totally normal. One man who had no bladder and was wearing a bag, all of a sudden felt the urge he had to go to the bathroom and when he did, the bag was not unattached and he was able to use the bathroom normally. A blind woman who had come with her unsaved husband received her sight; she had been blind for 10 years. After she received her sight, her husband broke down and cried, “I believe, I believe, Jesus I believe in You now! He knelt down and accepted Him into his life at that moment! A crippled man got up and out of his wheelchair, he had been injured in the Korean War and was hospitalized for many months. He had been in a wheelchair ever since he was released from the Veteran’s Hospital and now, he was running, not walking, but running around the sanctuary. We had one Viet Nam veteran that had lost most of his right arm and injured his left hand and the Lord put his arm back on him and fixed his injured hand! Praise God!!!
This book is on Amazon.Com, Author: Marilyn S. Jennings
THE FEET OF THEM
How beautiful are the feet of them,
the pillars of strength, and stance of him,
the hands, the smile and face of him,
who brings to us good news.
How lovely are the voices of them,
the song, the Word, the sound of him,
the message of grace and love of Him,
sending them who brings good news.
How precious the hoary heads of them,
the glory of the Lord of them,
the birth, the life, and death of them,
who brings to us good news.
A missionary and a serial killer are not that way born.
Both evolved by the environment each experienced and individually came from.
I
"Good morning. Jesus Loves You," I say
To passers by, with my calm shalom
I feel good, they feel good. But ought we?
Since Columbus sailed the Ocean blue ...
There's been a holocaust on the earth
The other one, against the environment
They can't stop it in the Amazon
So, why talk of the last Orangutans
In Indonesia, or Malaysia: old Batavia?
Yes, I am a pastor, and I love Jesus
(Which Jesus? you ask. That's the question)
II
After these post-Columbian centuries
India and China seem to have managed without Jesus
It irks me, that with so much clout, empires fail
To show the side of Jesus we see individually
The Samaritan woman at the well (John 4)
The blind beggar who never had eyes, until made for him
By Jesus outside the Temple (escaping stoning, yet healing)
Read it in John 9. Or the Love of the Father, Luke 15
The one Jesus revealed to us as "Abba." Why not these?
I heard Romans 3 (verse 23) and John 14: 6 aplenty
It sounded better in my private devotions
Shall I mention E. Stanley Jones, Christian ashram
(Not Christian Yoga). How to be a missionary
And tell them of Jesus. Just Jesus. Not the "civilized economy."
A missionary and a serial killer are not that way born.
Both evolved by the environment each experienced and individually came from.
If you switched both at birth with the other’s environment,
your otherwise missionary would end up a killer and your otherwise killer a saint.
That's difficult for people to accept initially,
because they have to drop “free will” and individuality.
If you can get past that one the rest is easy to understand,
including the need for a global entirely different kind of environment.
Inspired from the teachings of Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows.
Saint Patrick died on March 17th.
So we celebrate the day with green and drink.
Patrick, was kidnapped to Ireland as a slave,
a condition he never fully forgot or forgave.
Patty (as he was known by his friends)
was a sober, relentless, devout Christian.
As a missionary, he gallivanted methodically, converting heathens
and if he failed to convert you, you weren’t left breathin’.
He could burn you at the steak for ignoring ‘reason’.
To show Christ’s power, he ‘banished’ the snakes,
It’s amazing, the difference a miracle can make.
The year 461 pre-dated laptops and even the Internet,
so, I think it’s time we finally forgive and even forget
the sad, sordid history of Catholic conversion “therapy”
because today we need a reason to drink until we’re green.
.
.
Webster: Gallivant: “travel for pleasure.”
My roommates and I went to Doublin, Ireland last summer.
In casual conversation we asked how they celebrated Saint Patrick's day and their celebrations are like ours, more or less - a secular overindulgence. But on a deeper level, this holiday, they say, is dedicated to the patron saint of heathen genocide.
They heard a voice, they responded
Though indistinctive the call, unclear their destination
Waiting not for a signed correspondence
They mobilized and departed to their destination
Then arrived the challenges staring at their face
The seas, the deserts there to cross
Thirst, hunger and starvation, theirs to face
Yet determined to bear their cross
Lost in the wilderness, searching for the lost souls
As week stretch into months and months expand into years
Traveling miles without end because of their love for lost souls
Yet they have no plan to retreat even after many years
Not that they are fugitive, fugitives run away from home
Not that they are vagabond, vagabonds have no home
Not that they are wanderer, wanderers are far away from home
They are pilgrims, like pilgrims they are heading home
Suffering man's blatant inhumanity to man
Undetered for they know they are on a mission
The vision, on their face fiercely to man
As in the manners of every deputation
Trekking long miles of single-file roads
Enduring crude moist heat and drenching rains
The nuisance of mosquitoes and sand flies en road
And myriad indigenous wild insects and pains
Righteousness and morality prayerfully to seek
Like humanitarians caring nothing for their own lives
So long as they could preach the message, heal the sick
And bring education and enlightenment to people's lives
Marvelous ministers
meant to share the gospel
message, men and women
motivated by love
marked by God to go forth
making disciples, true
mentors of faith and peace.
Written on 4/20/2017
Not sure why
USA red
relentlessly white
and not so much blue WholeEarth patriots
have consistently
selflessly supported
medical missionaries
vaccinating against every unmasked
health threatening disease
erupting in tribal life
of darkest social systemic Africa
Yet fail to co-empathically embrace
basic
fundamental
win/win evangelically redemptive
bipartisan public health care
here in domestic
Straight White
USA Christian
flag-waving homes
Where live and breathe
our own at-risk children
And climate threatened grandchildren
And pandemonic RightWing denihilistic
degenerating public and private health prospects
for great grandchildren
Who might hope to survive
for more than another wealthy
humane-divine
nature-spirited century
Sacredly meaningful
unmasked
transparent
and multiculturally vulnerable
co-empathic
polypathic
EarthBound public and private
eco/theo-logical
Celebrating systemic
global inter/inner-connected
good-faith health consciousness.
Missionaries were cunning
Not less than a cat’s eye fixed on a meal with a waggling tail
Curiosity extended in those that heard them speak.
With a thorned crown of dead porcupine.
A pagan king and His ignorant servant standing taller than palm trees
Leaning forward like a falling tower to its knees.
”Story tellers.”
They bring stories on what lies beyond your majesties' kingdom.
A routine of tales sang under a silver silent moonlight
It was Entertainment at a day’s end of a successful hunt.
The tales told to kings articulated volumes of curiosity
As the red fire flowing its light on curious faces,
The missionaries had learnt to tread softly
Not less than a cat’s eye fixed on a meal with a waggling tail
And so they carried on and drew mass crowds in this likeness.
MISSIONARIES FOR GOD
Putting their own lives in danger,
In foreign lands like a stranger,
They come and live and serve the Lord,
In God's eyes, what a great record!
Missionaries filled with His zeal,
Working for God, our hearts they steal,
Leaving their motherland behind,
To their own needs, they become blind,
God leads them in that distant land,
He guides them with His own right hand,
Midst trials, troubles and sorrows,
He's with their unsure tomorrows,
Struggling, they're still victorious,
Their sacrifice is glorious,
Going to ends of all the earth,
They spread God's Word, His loving worth.
8 syllables per line
09.17.19