“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Eph 2:10)
The word translated ‘handiwork’ or ‘workmanship’ in Ephesians 2:10 in Greek is ‘poiema’, from which the English word poem is derived. Few of us think of ourselves as poems! Our lives mostly seem banal, mundane, ordinary. At best we feel like prose, and usually not even exciting prose at that!
But with the eyes of faith we can see ourselves in a different light. Our lives are like songs, ‘a poem with meaning more than words can say.’ God is shaping us, moulding us, making us into something beautiful. There is significance and purpose even in the ordinariness of our everyday lives.
“Life is a song we must sing with our days,
A poem with meaning more than words can say,
A painting with colours no rainbow can tell,
A lyric that rhymes either heaven or hell.
We are living letters that doubt desecrates,
We’re the notes of the song of the chorus of faith,
God shapes every second of our little lives
And minds every minute as the universe waits by.
The pain and the longing
The joy and the moments of light
Are the rhythm and rhyme
The free verse of the poem of life.
So look in the mirror and pray for the grace
To tear off the mask, see the art of your face
Open your ear lids to hear the sweet song
Of each moment that passes and pray to prolong
Your time in the ball of the dance of your days
Your canvas of colors of moments ablaze
With all that is holy
With the joy and the strife
With the rhythm and rhyme of the poem of your life
With the rhythm and rhyme of the poem of your life.” (Michael Card, ‘The Poem of Your Life’)
Michael Card, ‘The Poem of Your Life’