This poem is based on Rev. Jonathan Fisk’s book, Echo.
The world is broken, —
totally messed up.
We know this innately;
it cannot be escaped.
One God designed the world,
yet we worship false gods.
He created us to know His name,
but many do not know Him.
The world designed to live on His Word
is now a world living in famine of it.
The world was built in a certain order
but now lives in chaos and decay.
Humanity created to love one another
is instead killing each other,
even attacking those in the womb,
“neighbour” defined as separation.
Designed with the diversity of man and woman,
this distinction has been destroyed.
Sex is used as a weapon, a tool,
and a toy for the slaves of pleasure.
We have more things than we need,
yet we constantly want more.
Names are meant to bless neighbour,
but we wish to smear all but our own.
When discussing biblical creation,
we’re distracted by trivial digressions,
like if “day” actually means “day.”
Yet the crux of Genesis is the Fall.
God created a perfect man
in a good, perfect world.
The man walked with God
and called Him by name.
All things were in order;
the family was secure.
Everything God spoke
the man knew only as Truth.
But a rebellion was schemed:
the self-made Liar reared his ugly head.
The man chose to believe the Liar,
severing his will from the Creator.
Placed as the king of creation,
he subjected all things to the Liar.
Thus, the world became broken,
countless lies filling the earth.
When the world broke,
it shook the cosmos, —
today’s evils merely aftershocks.
And we argue about a day’s length.
We are so entirely broken
that we blame God for it all.
“Couldn’t He have created a world
incapable of falling?”
He did.
God did not create us
capable of falling and evil.
The world was so perfectly good
that evil was impossible.
Yet we did it anyway.
We did the impossible thing
of separating ourselves from God,
and we did it by choice.
We became a disease in the world.
What do you do with disease?
You kill it.
Death is how God deals with evil.
He does what a good God does, —
He kills evil. He kills us.
“Why not just kill us all at once?”
Because God so loved the world
that His Son willingly subjected Himself
to its brokenness and evil.
God would rather save you than destroy you.
The thing that drives us crazy
is that His salvation is slow,
and He works it out for us
by telling us a story.
In an age of instant gratification,
idleness in reading,
and distraction in listening,
it is no wonder why faith is sparse.
The world began with His Word,
and it continues to tell the story
of how God is saving us in the slow,
inevitable redemption of His Son.
The Lutheran Column 