May this Holy Week, these days of walking with Jesus and seeing how he set his face toward his death on cross and “did not despise its shame,” find you meditating on Scripture and other good words — to enlarge your imagination concerning God’s love found in Jesus Christ and to unite your heart to praise his name.
Here are a few poems you and the children in your life can share together, as you enter in the story of the Cross.
Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe | CS Lewis
“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”
April | John Updike
April
It's Spring! Farewell
To chills and colds!
The blushing, girlish
World unfolds
Each flower, leaf,
And blade of turf--
Small love-notes sent
From air to earth.
The sky's a hard
Of prancing sheep,
The birds and fields
Abandon sleep,
And jonquils, tulips,
Daffodils
Bloom bright upon
The wide-eyed hills.
All things renew.
All things begin.
At church, they bring
The lilies in.
Royalty | Luci Shaw
He was a plain man
and learned no latin.
Having left all gold behind
he dealt out peace
to all us wild men
and the weather
He ate fish, bread,
country wine and God’s will
Dust sandalled his feet
He wore purple only once
and that was an irony
Quiet | Leslie Bustard
…like a robin’s egg in a nest,
a row of yellow tulips, petals closed,
the last few shadowed moments
on the eastern horizon,
and Holy Saturday,
as Christ was lying in the sealed tomb,
and the angels were waiting.
The Lion, the Witch, the Wardrobe | CS Lewis
The rising of the sun had made everything look so different – all the colours and shadows were changed – that for a moment they didn’t see the important thing. Then they did. The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.
“Oh, oh, oh!” cried the two girls rushing back to the Table.
“Oh, it’s too bad,” sobbed Lucy; “they might have left the body alone.”
“Whose done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it more magic?”
“Yes!” said a great voice behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.
Emmaus 2 | Malcolm Guite
We thought that everything was lost and gone,
Disaster on disaster overtook us
The night we left our Jesus all alone
And we were scattered, and our faith forsook us.
But oh that foul Friday proved far worse,
For we had hoped that he had been the one,
Till crucifixion proved he was a curse,
And on the cross our hopes were all undone.
Oh foolish foolish heart why do you grieve?
Here is good news and comfort to your soul:
Open your mind to scripture and believe
He bore the curse for you to make you whole
The living God was numbered with the dead
That He might bring you Life in broken bread.
from The Jesus Storybook Bible | Sally Lloyd-Jones
And the King says, “Look!”
God and his children are together again.
No more running away. Or hiding.
Nor more crying or being lonely or afraid.
Nor more being sick or dying.
Because all these things are gone.
Yes, they’re gone forever.
Everything sad has come untrue.
And see — I have wiped away every tear from every eye!”
And then a deep, beautiful voice that sounded like thunder
In the sky says, “Look, I am making everything new!”
—
This post was written by Leslie Bustard, one of the co-editors of Wild Things and Castles in the Sky.