A World That's Gone Astray

Meaning in Psalm 67

by Alfred D. Byrd

BLESSINGS on us who worship our God
Are not for the sake of us alone,
But are signs to a world that's gone astray
Of where the lost can turn for safety.
No one created exists for oneself,
But for God, Who shaped both earth and heaven.
Maker and giver of light and of life,
Our God is like the sun that rises,
Banishing darkness and bringing relief,
On furrows in which the seeds of hope
Lie buried, awaiting a call to grow—
To fulfill their purpose, the yielding of fruit.

With plants or peoples, the path is the same:
There's plowing, sowing, and tending before
The harvest arrives, and the One Who sowed
Will gather the grain into peace and joy.
No weed will slip in amid the grain:
Our God is a judge who accepts what's true
And rejects what's false, to be cast from the light.
Each nation will yield our God in the end
A host of lives that have turned from the world
To the One Who made it. With songs of praise
For the One Who guided the seed to full growth,
The nations assembled as one at the Throne
Will bless the One Who has blessed us all.

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.

A Place of Testing

Meaning in Psalm 66

by Alfred D. Byrd

SOMETIMES, our walk with our God is hard.
It starts with us in a place of testing.
Servants of those who've taken our freedom—
Servants, still worse, of sin in our hearts—
We labor in darkness until we call
On what alone provides us with hope—
On You, the Source of light and of life.
Our testing, we learn, hasn't been in vain:
We felt within us a fire from Your hand—
A fire that purges our hearts of dross
And leaves us spotless — gleaming silver.

Israel living in Egypt as slaves
Is a sign to all who have eyes to see
Of how our God responds to humans.
Calling on God while they lived in chains,
They got an answer, a speaker of law
Who opened a sea and led them through it—
Barriers crumble, meeting our God.
In a place away from lures of the world,
A people was tested with fire for years
Until the ones who honored the light
Were ready to enter the land of their hope.
Their time of testing made sense to them
When they reached their goal with the help of God.
They built a temple, a house for their God
To live in their midst and receive their praise.

Let us praise our God with songs of joy!
Amid a world that feeds us despair,
Our God provides our lives with meaning.
Nothing dismays us, standing with God.
The word of our God illumines our path;
The Spirit within us empowers our walk;
The light of the Throne proclaims our goal.
When we turn from love of lies of the world,
We can pray to God and know that we're heard:
We can come to the Throne and find acceptance,
Welcome from One Who's loved us always.
Choosing to save us, our God comes near
And calls us from darkness to live in the 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.

Return to Peace

Meaning in Psalm 65

by Alfred D. Byrd

MAKER of heavens and earth, our God,
To You, by right, belong our praises.
Mountains that tower above our heads
Are there because You raised and shaped them.
Tempests that tear the face of the sea
Grow still when You say, "Return to peace."
The sea of nations, frightened and angry,
Settles to rest when You come with judgment.
Often, we turn aside from Your ways
To twist the truth and to do what's wrong,
But You, still loving the works of Your hands
However they've learned to misshape themselves,
Teach us our errors and lead us ahead
On the path that takes us to peace at Your throne.

The world that You made is a place that You love—
A garden for us, Your creatures, to tend,
Recalling each day that we'll fail unless
Your hand supports us and shields us from harm.
You made the water that fills the seas
And fashioned the cycle that forms the clouds.
As rain, the water comes down on the fields
To waken the earth to life, Your gift
To the world that You love and will come to restore.
The grass will spring up to feed Your flocks;
The grain will grow to sustain us sheep,
Your children, who wait for the sound of Your voice.
At Your call, the ones whom You love will come
To attend a feast with You as its head.
When we see the harvest, we'll shout for joy.
How happy are those who've learned what You do!
We'll come to Your house with gifts in our hands—
With gifts that we have because of Your love—
To see Your goodness — to live in Your 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.

A Person with Friends

Meaning in Psalm 64

Alfred D. Byrd

HUMAN nature bewilders us all.
In a world that's filled with hardships and woe,
You'd think that we'd want to help each other.
A person alone may fall and not rise;
A person with friends may be raised to one's feet
And may raise in turn a friend who's fallen.
Blessings bestowed are blessings returned—
At least, if we let our reason rule us.

Sadly, we honor other masters;
Reason is rare in the world around us.
Many prefer to consume their own kind.
The poison of lies on the knives of tongues
Has made the guiltless the prey of the vile.
They sharpen their tongues and thrust them in deep
To gain their end, the theft of a life.
The law says, "Guiltless, unless there's proof";
The crowd, however, believes a lie
In a rush to judgment. No time for the truth!

In fairness to those who hunt their own kind,
We shouldn't accuse them falsely in turn:
They don't believe, "Each man for himself."
The tellers of lies will join as allies
Teaching each other how best to lay traps
For those whom they hope to seize and then rob,
Sharing the plunder with friends in deceit.

In fear of our foes, we beg our God
To hide us from lies and the harm that they cause.
Our God will repay the wicked in kind;
A teller of lies will be trapped in one's lies
And feel the pain that came from one's tongue.
The ones who feared and admired the wicked—
Evil has friends while it rides the crest,
But loses them all when it falls from the wave—
Will run for their lives, their hero forgotten.

Seeing the fall of evil reminds us,
Frightened children, of God on the Throne.
In the midst of evil, we need to teach
Ourselves and the world of Who has made us.
Wisdom consists of thinking of God
As the One Who can do what needs to be done.
Our Maker maintains a balance in things.
Although, today, the world is evil,
Only what's good can endure in God.
The one who trusts in the hope of the King
Will witness glory and live in joy.

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.

Unbroken by Life

Meaning in Psalm 63

Alfred D. Byrd

DAVID, again, was far from his home.
Who knows what foe had sent him to exile?
Absalom, maybe, best loved of his sons,
Was fighting his father. The Word doesn't say.
What we know is this: in exile, he sang
Of his hope in God, the One Who'd save him.

"Hateful persons who dream of my death
Have turned my homeland into a desert.
Empty and hopeless is life on the earth,
A bed of a stream devoid of water—
Stretches of sand unbroken by life—
As long as I live away from my God.
In the waste where I dwell, I've become the prey
Of those who hunt and feed in darkness.

"Deserts will bloom when we see our God.
An eagle that flies above the sand,
Our God enshadows the land with wings
That give us shelter, a rest from the heat.
This rest, however, isn't our goal;
The eagle flies off, inviting us onward
To seek a place where we'll live with God.
I'll run through the sand in the blaze of noon
To find the temple, the house of light
Where I'll stand with a crowd before the throne
Of the One Who fills my life with meaning.

"Lovers of darkness, who hate the truth,
Won't find the temple. They'll die as they lived.
The hand that kills will be killed in turn;
The lovers of darkness will go to the depths
In which no light will bother their eyes.
To those, however, who love the light,
A vision of glory will rise and not set.
A king on the earth will praise the King
Who reigns forever. Let's worship the King!"

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.

Persons Who Smile

Meaning in Psalm 62

Alfred D. Byrd

OFTEN, the faithful feel driven to ask,
"How long must we watch the wicked prosper?"
Trusting a neighbor seems hopeless at times.
The world is full of persons who smile,
Pronouncing blessings of peace to one's face,
But plotting one's downfall behind one's back.
To those who live for themselves alone,
A lie is a tool to make one wealthy.
Someone honest who comes to a throne,
They'll try to cast down as a threat to them.
What's good is evil to those who tell lies.
The wicked attack us for trusting in God
And win for a time in this world of grief.
We feel like walls about to topple;
Barely a push is needed to wreck us.

Shifting our gaze from the earth to the sky,
We can learn where we stand in the sight of God.
The greatest of us is nothing beside
The One Who made the stars and their worlds.
The rich may say, "I'm the one in charge;
The poor take orders, or do without."
What seems true on the earth may be false with God.
If we stand on the moon and look at the earth,
The rich appears as small as the poor.
How weighty our actions may seem to us!
When we build a thing to last forever
(Castles of pride are rooted in sand),
A breath from God may sweep it away.
The wealth that you win at the end of a gun
Will leave when one turns the gun on you.
Not even what's earned is safe on the earth.
A flood, a wildfire, termites, a whirlwind—

Only in God can we look for safety.
Nothing can threaten the throne of our King.
Our God is above and beyond our sight,
But lies within reach of a heart of faith.
Our Maker, enthroned beyond the stars,
Is here inside us, in touch with our heart.
It is God within us Who spurs us to work,
Endows us with gifts to yield us success,
And clears a path that runs to our goal.
Our God will reward the work that we do
When it comes from a heart that seeks the truth.
Our God is a rock on which we can build
A temple of faith that stands secure.
As we do our work from day to day
And fulfill the will of the One Whom we serve,
Let us sit in silence and wait for our God
To reclaim the world from tellers of lies
And make it a home of light and of love.

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.

Dead Weights

Meaning in Psalm 61

Alfred D. Byrd

TROUBLES abound on the earth today.
They come like a flood in which one can drown
Unless a helper pulls one to safety.
Worldly treasures provide us no help;
They're burdens, dead weights that drag us downwards.
Battered by waves and crushed against rocks,
I can do nothing else but call on my God.

Please pull me, my God, from the flood that flings me,
Helpless and frightened, wherever it runs.
Please set me in safety amid Your fortress.
Guarded by You, a rampart of stone,
An eagle whose wings enshadow Your nest,
I can turn from fearing for life and for limb
To praising Your Name and keeping Your law.

On the earth, You guard our lives through rulers
Chosen by You to fulfill Your mission.
Shepherds, Your rulers are meant to be,
Not wolves that eat the sheep of Your flock.
A ruler must guard the people from foes
Who come from without to kill by force,
Who come from within to kill by stealth.
A ruler must make the governed prosper,
Gaining the good of the work that they do
As they live in peace with neighbors of peace.

The peace that lasts is the peace that grows
When we live in light, in law, and in love.
We live in love when we kneel before God
And say, "We begin and end in You,
For You are Maker, sustainer, and Judge.
We die to ourselves to live in You.
The life that endures is the life of God."
When we rise, let's do the will of God,
The work of love that results in peace.

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.