Times of Feasting

Meaning in Psalm 81

by Alfred D. Byrd

TRUMPETS announce a season of joy
For children of God who keep the Law.
At the start of the month (the moon is new)
And amid the month (the moon is full)
Are times of feasting that call to mind
The blessings of God, both present and past.
May harps keep time for voices that sing
Of how our God set free and raised up
A line of exiles who labored as slaves.

The account begins with a boy named Joseph.
Favored by Jacob above his brothers,
Joseph strutted about in a coat,
A weaving of rainbows, that named him the heir.
A man who struts is a man who'll fall.
His brothers, devoured by a worm named Envy,
Sold him as slave to traders who took him,
Mourning his fate, to the land of Egypt.
Purchased and put to work by a guard,
He turned to God and found the courage
(Failure or fame begins in the heart)
To work so well that he rose to success.

A man who rises is one who draws
Attention from ones who wish to harm him.
The wife of the guard, in love with looks
That may have helped the slave to success,
Invited Joseph to share her bed.
When he spurned her offer from love of the Law
(A man and a wife, united as one,
Are holy to God and barred to others),
Jealousy made her accuse him of rape.
The guard, on the word of a wife who'd lied,
Confined the slave, though guiltless, to jail.

In prison, he turned again to God
And found the courage to rise through work.
He received a blessing from God — a gift
Of telling hidden meanings of dreams.
A crisis arose. The king of Egypt
Suffered from nightmares that baffled his aides.
A slave emerged from prison to say,
"The land is facing an age of famine."
Joseph got drafted to deal with its threat.
He'd risen to stand at the side of a king.

As he worked like mad to gather a harvest,
Joseph found time to recall his home
And wondered whether wickedness reigned there,
Breaking the peace of a house of God,
Or brothers had turned from their path of sin.
When they came from hunger to beg him for grain,
He tested their hearts with tests like his own
And found a change, a sorrow for sin
And a hope of finding a way to the light.

He brought his loved ones to live in Egypt.
Feasting went on in the days of Joseph.
Famine, however, would follow his death.
A king who forgot the teller of dreams
Enslaved his loved ones. Weary and beaten,
Grubbing in mud and straw to make bricks,
They labored for years under whips in the heat
Until they cried from the depths to their God.

Their Maker sent them a prophet to lead them,
Rescued from Egypt by wonders of God,
To a hill of fire, where they saw in lightning
And heard in thunder a word from heaven.
"I Am your Maker, your Savior, your King.
Your God is unique, the One alone.
Whatever you treasure in place of Me
Will lead you astray onto paths of death.
Whenever you turn and call on my Name,
I'll be swift to come restore you to life."

From God, we've received a gift to be free—
A gift, or a curse — the choice is our own.
No judgment is harder than having the right
To do what we choose. We destroy ourselves
When we let the glitter of things of the world
Deceive us and lead us away from the Throne.
Wherever we go, however we stray,
Our God, however, remains nearby.
At a cry from our hearts, our God will come.
The will of our God is to strike the wolves
And to feed the sheep with honey and wheat.
If we choose, let us choose to honor the King
With voices in song to the tune of a harp.

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.