My Bible May Be a Little Different than Yours

I will tell you why I love it.
It’s got everything.
Adventure. Love. Failure.
A sprawling cast of characters,
most of them broken beyond redemption.
Murderers, drunkards, prostitutes.
Cowards, adulterers, lowly and high-born.
Wars and captivity and revenge
and the recurring theme blunt as a sledge,
that no one is past redemption. No one.
Not even me.

About this poem

I often tell people I am a terrible pastor. I am irreverent. I laugh too much. I am far from the picture of holiness people expect when they hear the word “pastor”.

But, the older I get; the more I read and study, the more I have come to see the bible as a collection of flaws and madmen that somehow, once they found the courage to let God in, became something amazing. Not perfect. We never get perfect. But amazing.

Read it enough and forgiving comes easier. Even forgiving ourselves.

Where people get the right to bludgeon other imperfect people with it, I will never understand. Our bibles must be different somehow.

Be well. Travel wisely,

Tom

PS: The picture is of one of the palettes in my studio. Messy, like most of us, but potentially the source of great beauty. That’s what you get when your poet is an abstract artist too.