Christ on Holy Saturday

Re: Deemed
by Mary Harwell Sayler

Consider the lily
of the moon.

Consider how
its spinning
does not toil.

Consider the lily-
shaped flames of hell
where the wretched
walk through water
on Christ’s back:

His face a lily
white with flame,

His tongue an
inferno for our
wrong words,

His eyes alight
with our cured souls,

His Body
our kind Host
of comfort.


© 2013, Mary Sayler, all rights reserved. “Re:Deemed” appeared on the Catholic Exchange website in 2007 and is included in the Kindle e-book, a Christian Poet’s Guide to Writing Poetry, available from Amazon.

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God’s promise from the prophet Isaiah

Promising Good Friday

Who believes what we have heard?
To whom has the strength of the LORD been revealed?
For the One we awaited grew up
like a shoot from a dry root in the ground.

He had no majestic form to look upon –
nothing in His appearance to cause desire.
Instead, He was despised and rejected –
suffering such grief, we wanted to hide our faces
from facing so much sorrow.

We saw no explanation for Him,
and so we despised Him,
even though He took on our infirmities,
even though He took on our dis-ease,
even though we thought Him struck down
by God.

But He was wounded for our transgressions
and crushed for our iniquities.
Upon Him came the full punishment
to make us whole, and by the stripes
borne on His back, we all are healed.

Like sheep, we all have gone astray.
We have all turned to our own way,
and, as the LORD laid on Him
the iniquity of us all, He had to pay
for us,
for our ancestors,
and for our children’s crimes.

When accused of our wrongdoings,
He did not even open His mouth
but went silently like a sheep before its shearers,
like a Lamb led to its slaughter,
like a perversion of justice taken wordlessly away.

Who could imagine He had any future?
For He was cut from the land of the living
and stricken for our transgressions.

Someone carved His grave among the tombs
owned by the wicked and the rich,
even though He had done no violence,
nor even had a deceitful word
to say. But, by the will of the LORD,
pain crushed His life into an offering –

the final sacrifice we had to bring
to God for sin – for us,
for our ancestors, for our children – all,
His spiritual offspring.

© 2013, Mary Harwell Sayler, prayer-a-phrase poem of today’s Bible reading in Isaiah 53:1-10

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Passover: The First, The Last

Promise of Passover

The blood of a lamb on the doorpost,
the blood of an unblemished lamb
on your doorpost,
the blood that drips from the crossbeams
is the sign on the house where you live –

the sign for death to pass over,
the sign for a day of remembrance,
the sign of the death of the firstborn –
of the Lamb who gave blood for your doorpost.


© 2013 Mary Harwell Sayler, poem prayer-a-phrased from today’s reading in Exodus 12

Bible prayer-a-phase of Isaiah 49

Staying Light in the LORD
by Mary Sayler

Before I was born, the LORD called me.
In the womb, God named me and made
my mouth a sword
hid in the hull of His hand –
a smooth arrow
quivering in Him.

And the LORD said to me, “Ah! You are
My servant who shines in Me,”
but I said, “No! I have served in vain.
I’ve spent my strength
for nothing but my own name,
while thinking myself pure, thinking
my cause was God-caused.

But the LORD, Who formed me to be
His servant as one who brings His own
back to Him in His own strength, not mine,
said, “It is too light a thing to raise and restore
My people who are My people, and so
I will give you as a light to the nations.
I will give you to the nations as a light,
and to the ends of the earth, this light,
lit only by Me, will shine My salvation
into the deepest dark corners of the earth,
lightening and lifting every unfinished end.”

© 2013, Mary Harwell Sayler, prayer-a-phrased poem evoked by today’s Daily Bible Reading in Isaiah 49

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Name change and changing plans

One of my favorite quotes comes from the movie Sabrina where the title character says, “Sometimes more isn’t better. Sometimes it’s just more,” to which I add, “Amen!” But I still wound up with 7 blogs and 2 websites so also add, “Oops.”

Too many good ideas, good activities, and even good ministries can be too much of a good thing.

Therefore, I recently let one website go but couldn’t get a handle on how to regroup the blogs. Since I believe in the importance of each one, I’ve been praying about this longer than Lent. But finally, clarity came the first day of Holy Week.

Having written about writing for many years, I have numerous articles to draw from that could be helpful, I hope, for members of the Christian Poets and Writers group on Facebook. Many of those articles, which will gradually appear in the Christian Poets and Writers blog, have previously appeared here, but In a Christian Writer’s Life is no longer my primary focus for newly written articles. The Bible is.

If you have visited my blogs on Bible People, Bible Prayers, Christian Healing Arts, and What the Bible Says About Love, I pray you’ll follow the newly revised blog here, where, Lord willing, new posts will most likely arise in prayer-a-phrases from Daily Bible Readings.

In addition some of my poems previously published in books or secular journals will soon be on the Poetry Editor blog, Lord willing, which means that the only blog of mine that may stay as is for now are reviews of new translations, study editions, and children’s Bibles on the Bible Reviewer blog.

With two new reviews still waiting to be winged, others may depend on whether Bible publishers add me to their list of reviewers. And, oh, I pray they do because when it comes to the Bible less just doesn’t work for me! Sometimes more is better.

© 2013, Mary Harwell Sayler

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