Poetry
~
Reflections From Life Itself

 

The Lord Will Provide

 

Coming home from Liberia one cannot help but reevaluate many aspects of life: the very extreme level of poverty and the equally extreme breadth of poverty extant in the region we visited; the juxtaposition of this poverty with a widespread sense of joy and contentment seen in the nationals we encountered - the children, the adults in the neighborhood, and the adult teachers and other ministry leaders; and our ideas of a just and merciful God.

Attempting to bring sense to all this resulted in the following poem.

The Lord Will Provide

O our heavenly Father
We praise your name;
Almighty, righteous
King of Kings,
Creator God,
Jehovah-Jireh.

O Lord of the heavenly host
We bow at your throne of grace,
We fall before Thee and
Marvel at Thy way,
Thy perfect way.

But the mystery is great
For we have seen with our eyes:
Come and I will give you rest
Yet see no rest;
My yoke is easy
Yet the way seems hard;
My burden is light
Yet see the heavy load.

O savior God
We lift plaintiff eyes to you
To see afresh, yes,
To see your perfect way afresh;
May memories never dim,
But be sharpened by you,
Quickened into us by you.

O Father our God
We join in the heavenly chorus;
Calling Hallelujah!
Faithful and True!
Blessed be the Lamb!
The Lord will provide!
Jehovah-Jireh!

Steve Belton
upon returning from Monrovia, Liberia
April, 2011