Easily Broken

Meaning in Psalm 46

Alfred D. Byrd

MANY will face misfortune today.
The world in which we live is fragile,
Easily broken by chance or by hate.
An earthquake may shake a city apart
And send a wave across an ocean—
Distance provides us no shield from harm—
To drown a folk that works by the shore.
A heartbeat may pass, and the earth has gone mad.
Not nature alone, however, is fearsome:
Humans are ready to harm each other
Even though nature is peaceful for once.
The drums of war awaken slaughter;
Rifles shatter both peace and our lives;
The rage of nations convulses the earth
Far longer than earthquakes, eruptions, or floods.
In times of distress, when we live in fear,
We need to know that we have a helper.

Someone will answer our pleas for aid.
Our God, enthroned amid light unstained—
Enthroned above the throes of the earth—
Is also among us and knows what we feel—
Not a hair that falls escapes the gaze
Of the One Who fashioned the earth for good.
We're helpless to say the reason for wrongs
That go on too long, it seems to us—
Can we, mere creatures of space and of time,
Explain a mind eternal and vast?—
But we have a hope that comes from above—
The hope of our God, Who loves and redeems
Disordered creation from what it suffers.
Wickedness faces a day in court.
The guns that shatter the peace of the earth
Will shatter within the grip of our God;
The voice that shouts defiance will falter,
Fearful of what its Judge will hand down.
When we see a world polluted made clean
And the hearts of humans restored to faith
In the One Who set their hearts to beating,
Heaven will be a stream of water
Flowing to us from the throne of God
To purge us of sin and fill us with joy
At being henceforward children of light.

If this poem spoke to you, you may enjoy my Biblical epic poems

A Song of the One, the age-old account of Creatlon, Fall, Redemption, and Glory retold in verse for a new millennium, and

The Stars Bow Down: An Epic of Joseph, the timeless tale of a favorite son whose brothers sold him into slavery, but whom God raised from a prison to save the known world from famine.