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Finally comes the Poet

In Passage to India Walt Whitman is speaking the praise of poetry and telling us how important it is. His agenda is his own but his words express well the Christian's sense of Jesus and how he offers an entirely new way to look at the world. Here's what Whitman says:

After the seas are all crossed,…
After the great captains and engineers have
accomplished their work,

After the noble inventors, after the scientists,
the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist,
Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
the true son of God shall come singing his songs.

All our intellectual brilliance, our great advances in technology, our achievements in honourable endeavours, our inventions that make life easier for millions in each generation and whatever else—all these are the gift of God but only the "Singer" (as Calvin Miller has taught us) can make sense of it all. Only the true Son of God can make all our possessions and advances something meaningful and something to sing about.

Only Jesus can take golden harvests and make them more wonderful than they are. Only Jesus can take two lovers and make them more beautiful than they appear to be. Only Jesus can take a child and show the child means the world to God (as Harold Shank has taught us). Only Jesus can take a little out of the way planet and make it The Visited Planet (as J. B Phillips has taught us). Only Jesus in a prayer can make us see that the vast and lengthening corridors of deep dark space and the flaming and collapsing monsters we call stars are all in the hands of someone he called "Father" in Luke 10:21.

There's something profoundly comforting in all that and there's something in all that that enables us to look at the heavens and the earth with a new understanding and a new assurance of faith.

Allow yourself to rejoice in this. The wonderful things of life and the creation are more wonderful than we know.

Take His word for it.

The Scarlet Letter

Finally comes the Poet