Twice Told Poems: Henry V

We two, we happy two, we band of lovers,

For she today who shares her kiss with me

Shall be my lover; be she ne’er so vile.

Dawn

Thoughts linger on the road behind

And fear the course to come--

I know not where this path will lead

Nor where this river runs.

The darkness of this looming wood

Strikes fear within my soul,

And luring voices all around

Dare draw me from the goal.

Yet looking on the path traversed

I’ve trod this path before--

The bloss’ming fields I loved so dear

Came after rain had poured.

Yes, blackened storms toss to and fro,

And roads wind long ahead,

But I shall walk with hope renewed:

I know this too shall end;

For as the sun rises each morn

And birds awake at dawn,

The flow’ring moors shall soon return

And night’s dark clouds be gone. 

Oh sonnet, my sonnet!

Oh sonnet, sonnet, what for art thou now?

To number love then batter my wretch’d heart?

You ask my sights to bend, my will to bow

To consider a truth adorned, in part,

By pleasing sounds and smooth, swift dancing feet.

But moments come when meaning eludes me--

I wonder, should I trust your rhythmic beat?

Your argument persists and I can’t flee!

Alas! A turn! New motives are revealed!

New hope? Old guilt? A solution perhaps?

Ah! Passion now pervades with zest and zeal

And resolution comes with gentle slap

            To former words--yes, now a jewel to end

            That once again, my flitting thoughts may bend. 

The Lion King and Peter Pan

I remember when I was nine years old, standing out on the steps to the playground with Anni. I was eating my peanut butter crackers while she was eating her Oreos and looking thoughtfully out at the chaos before us. With a sigh, Anni turned to me and said, “I can’t wait until I’m sixteen. Then I’ll be almost grown up and be able to do all sorts of things and go all sorts of places on my own. I can’t wait to grow up.”

In that moment, I came to a very different conclusion: I realized my utter fear of growing up. That meant having to go to high school, then college. That meant moving away from home and not being able to crawl into Mom or Dad’s lap whenever I was scared of the road ahead. That meant being…alone.

Anni couldn’t wait to be king, while I wanted to fly off to Neverland.

Now sixteen has come and gone, and I’m here to tell you that I’m still afraid of growing up. I’m terrified of change and I tremble at the thought of the unknown. But time ticks away at an unstoppable pace and there is little I can do to change the inevitable. So what do I do? I tried turning the clock back, but the hour hand on my watch is stuck. I tried hiding under the covers and ignoring the things going on around me, but that didn’t last long. I tried shutting off all emotion and just marching ahead, but after three months, I finally broke down. Now I’m looking for another method by which to cope.

Everyone seems so excited to enter into this grand new world called college, but what about quirky, nostalgic teenage girls like me?

All that I can think to do now is to look back at where God has led me, and it doesn’t take long to realize that I’ve been here before. Not necessarily the same equation but the same formula, and the solution to this formula always seems to be found in the same way: on my knees. Every time I’ve been here--scared, afraid of what’s to come, and missing what’s behind--I’ve found that my hope is not in human comfort (as lovely as that is) nor is it in getting what I want (that usually doesn’t work), but in coming to a point of total humility before the Lord.

Every time I’m at this point, I find that I must relearn what it means to be content in any and every situation, and I am driven away from my own temporal solutions and to the powerful authority that is my Father’s Word. In my greatest weakness, I find that I am being made strong by the steady and constant hand of my Rock and my Salvation. He is my Refuge in the storm as well as my Pillar of Fire in the night, and although I long to be led out of each desert, I must first learn to content myself with simply being led. Like Charlotte Bronte’s Mr. Rochester, “My heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges: but far more wisely…You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its weakness?”

Acknowledging this with all sincerity, I now find comfort in the words of Anna Waring:
Father, I know that all my life
Is portioned out for me,
And the changes that are sure to come
I do not fear to see;
But I ask Thee for a present mind
Intent on pleasing Thee.

Prayer

Dear Lord! You know that I cannot come before You on account of my own self, my presumption or my worthiness. Just as I might desire to look upon You, yet in the same way I would not be permitted to do so and would not even know how I might begin to pray. Nevertheless I do come before You because You Yourself have commanded it and You earnestly encourage that we should call upon You. You have even pledged a promise. You sent Your own Son, He who teaches us that we should pray, and You have promised to give us the words that we use in prayer. Therefore I know that such prayer indeed pleases You, and that my claim, that I may commend myself as a child of God before You, as great as that may seem, comes from the fact that I must obey You as You would have it. May I never inflict lies upon You and through other and greater sins trespass against You, thereby despising Your command and rejecting the gift of faith in Your promise.   -Martin Luther

In a world that espouses pride, self-worth, and self-righteousness, it is so easy to forget my own unworthiness in the presence of my great and holy God. I so frequently bring Him down to my own level that I might claim understanding, and yet the beauty of His grace and power is that He is, in fact, so far above my understanding and that He is willing to stoop down and reveal just enough of Himself to allow me the privilege of knowing Him. May I never forget that God is God and I am not; I can only see a part of the picture He’s painting.

What's the Difference?

Have you ever wondered what the difference between various Bible translations really is? Or why it even matters which version you use as long as it’s a Bible?


Let’s take a moment to evaluate. There are two different types of Bible translations. The most widely accepted is the “dynamic equivalent,” or thought-for-thought version. This type of translation takes the original Greek and Hebrew texts and translates the thoughts and concepts into English while leaving out certain words or metaphors that may not be understood by the modern audience. While there are indeed some very decent and reliable dynamic equivalents, they do not compare with “formal dynamics” or literal translations, which translate the exact, or nearly exact, words from one language to another. Among these is the widely acclaimed English Standard Version, or ESV.

Within the past fifteen years or so, a new craze has taken flight in America’s Christian culture with the use of The Message Bible. What is The Message? Well, it’s a very liberally translated paraphrase of the original texts that attempts to make the Word of God more accessible and comprehensible to the modern reader. It does this, however, at the expense of many foundational elements in the Word. Eugene Peterson, the lone author of the work, downplays demonic activities and homosexuality and attempts to convey an overall more “friendly” tone.

Allow me to give you an example. Many of you are already familiar with Ephesians 6:12. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” That’s in the ESV. Now, notice how earnest the text is in conveying the seriousness of the fight—“rulers,” “authorities,” “cosmic powers,” “darkness,” and “forces of evil.” Weighty, right? Let’s turn to Ephesians 6:12 in The Message. “This is no afternoon athletic contest that we'll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels.” Tell me, does this seem to be nearly as convincing as the word-for-word version? Does it speak with the same solemnity and gravity? No, not really.



Quiz Time!

Alright, now, this is all well and good, but still, what does it really matter? So this popular new version is less intense, but it’s still the Bible, right? Maybe. We all agree that the Bible calls us not to conform to the world. Now, I’m going to read you two quotes at a time and I want you to decide which one is from The Message.

1. a) “With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.”

b)“[I have] more joy in one ordinary day than they get in all their shopping sprees.”

Which quote would you identify as coming from The Message, as coming from a supposed version of the Bible? The answer is “b”—yes, who knew the Bible talked about shopping sprees? The other one was from William Wordsworth.

2. a) “Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way…to finding yourself, your true self.”

b) “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

Which of these “find yourself” quotes could possibly have been taken from The Message? The answer was “a,” from Matthew 16:25. The second one was Gandhi.

3. a) “Nature always wears the colors of the Spirit.”

b) "Are your ears awake? Listen. Listen to the Wind Words, the Spirit blowing through the churches."

Nature? Wind? What kind of “spirit” is this—is it even in the Word of God? The answer, evidently, is yes, “b” is found in Revelation 3:22. “A” was Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I’m sure you are getting the point. The Message sounds a lot like these other worldly men—so much so that it actually serves to water down the true message of Scripture. So what do we do?

Let’s go back to our options. We’ve got dynamic equivalence, which would be your Message, Living Bible, and TNIV. Then we have the translations that are, in a manner of speaking, split between the two, such as the NIV and the NAB. Finally, we have our formal equivalence Bibles, the most accurate and reliable reads we have without simply learning Greek and Hebrew. These would be your NASB and ESV.

While the NASB is highly accurate in nature, it doesn’t flow as well in its read. The ESV, on the other hand, is totally reliable as well as being completely readable.

The website affirms that “The ESV is committed to the principle of ‘word-for-word’ translation, as the translation philosophy that most accurately conveys the Bible’s own understanding that ‘all Scripture is breathed out by God’ (2 Timothy 3:16), or as Jesus said, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matthew 4:4).”

Choosing to read and use the ESV over other translations allows for a more accurate, profitable, and serious study of the Word that shall stand firm forever. Why settle for anything less?





Bibliography

"How is the ESV Different from Other Translations?" ESV.org: Official Website of the English Standard Version Bible. Web. 28 Feb. 2010. .

The Message. Colorado Springs: NavPress Group, 2002. Print.

Ryken, Leland. Choosing a Bible understanding Bible translation differences. Wheaton, Ill: Crossway, 2005.  Print.

Having a Form of Godliness

How familiar has this scene become in America's comfortable, non-confrontational churches?

“People go to their place of worship and sit down comfortably, and think they must be Christians, when all the time all that their religion consists in is listening to an orator, having their ears tickled with music, and perhaps their eyes amused with graceful action and fashionable manners; the whole being no better than what they hear and see at the opera—not so good, perhaps, in point of aesthetic beauty, and not an atom more spiritual. Thousands are congratulating themselves, and even blessing God that they are devout worshippers, when at the same time they are living in an unregenerate Christless state, having the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. He who presides over a system which aims at nothing higher than formalism is far more a servant of the devil than a minister of God.”                                                                                          Charles Spurgeon, from Lectures to My Students