Today’s author is Prince of Peace member Carol Swanson.
I offer three poems for your reflections by Thomas John Carlisle, from Eve and After: Old Testament Women in Portrait, pp 60-61. This book can be found in our library.
NOT FORTY YEARS
Not forty years across the wilderness
nor even forty days, Naomi, Ruth
traveling alone, childless and husbandless,
near the Dead Sea of canceled love and youth.
A week, a fortnight at the very most
brought hastening Jordan to refreshing sight,
blest, they believed, by the bright heavenly host.
The Bethlehemite crossed with the Moabite
and journeying farther found that little town
where shepherds watch their flocks and fields increase
with wheat and barley, gleaning they can own
and know the promises of hope and peace.
And this is all they ask when first they come
begging of the House of Bread a widow’s crumb.
YOU, RUTH
You, Ruth, who knew you could not stand to stay
a stranger in your land whose gods seemed strange
once Mahlon praised the God of Abraham,
the God of promise and the God of change
who followed the people––rather, went before
filling their sky with challenges, commands,
and comforts; whom no idol could depict;
who lived among them in whatever lands
they were led to or through. This God who gave
Naomi strength to leave her husband’s grave
and both her sons’ last resting-place assured
that she would find wherever she might go
the power and presence of Creation’s Lord
even in the midst of bitterness and woe.
I too discover my little gods too small,
I too a pilgrim, stranger and bereft
set out for new horizons and some strange
belittled Bethlehem. Will I be left
lorn in my going out, my coming in?
Or am I given to glean my grains of truth,
encounter compassion in some foreign face,
by God’s grace gain an inheritance as did Ruth?
YOU WERE A STRANGER
Whether from justice or from kindness let
the needy, stranger, widow, fatherless
glean in your fields. Their table must be set
lest you in your own luxury forget
you were a stranger, you were in distress.
Closing Prayer from Gather magazine (38)
God who restores and renews, help us to be people who love in action, who welcome with dignity, who make room at the table. Send us to walk with others, trusting that you are working through us to bring connection and new life. Amen.