By Sara Darst

Music is the sweetest expression of the human experience.
It is the key that unlocks the door to our souls,
the path that finds its way to the deepest recesses of our hearts
where all our masked emotions and carefully guarded secrets lay hidden.
It is love without rejection, sorrow without reservations,
laughter without fear.

By Shirley McDonald

Considered poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes was the first African American author to support himself through his writing. Although Hughes’ poetry was written primarily to picture the plight of the African American when Jim Crow laws were still practiced in many states, this poem simply but vividly describes the emptiness and hopelessness of our lives without dreams.

By Warren Hershberger

When I was in college in the 1970s, I read many poems that deeply affected my life. I was raised in an Apostolic church, but was just coming to a saving knowledge of Jesus in my twenties.

By the Nashville Senior Bible Quiz Team

Haiku is a type of Japanese poetry, usually about nature. The poem structure consists of three lines broken down by syllables. Typically, the first line is five syllables, the second line is seven syllables, and the third line is five syllables.

By Paul F. Mitchell

When you’re stuck in a rut and the sun will not shine
Just decide to stop pouting and get rid of the whine
Move out from under that cloud hanging over your head
If you want life to change you’ve got to do something different!

By Maya Davis

Beyond a curve I cannot see
On map points which I cannot place
Trials lay in wait for me

What I need is Holy Grace
To get me through the situation
I need to seek and find His face

By Randy Bailey

I am amazed by the power of His hands,
And yet His touch is gentle to me,
He is able to keep me from falling,
They broke the chains of sin and set me free,
His hands have touched the multitudes,
They have opened the eyes of the blind,
His hands have fed the mouths of thousands,
They are gentle and they are kind,
His hands are full of compassion,

By James Crawford

They have prepared so many lessons.
They have had moments of laughter and moments of tears.
They answer each question patiently and comfort every fear.
They have made a financial sacrifice, one that can never be repaid.
They lovingly embrace each child, tie their laces or apply a Band-aid.
They teach our children about Jesus, what is wrong and what is right.
They are the ultimate object lesson, in the way they conduct their life.
They have responded to their heavenly calling to minister to each child.
Though I’m sure at times God stands and applauds,
They seldom hear praise from the crowd.
You see, when God created teachers, He had to work overtime.
Although they could only have two hands each,
He gave them the ability of eight or nine.
He knew they would need at least one extra eye, but where to put it
there was no place.
He thought for a moment, but then moved on: there is only so much room on one face.
He provided them with extra brains for the many subjects they would have to know.
He created within them an oversized heart, so they could love so many children that were not their own.
The brilliant, the exceptional, the handicapped, the gifted, and the plain,
They love every child and pray for them nightly by name.
With “I Love You’s,” pats on the back, hugs, and high-fives,
A teacher affects eternity with each impacted life.
They are called upon to be judges, lawyers, doctors, nurses and at times they are called to preach.
Of the many that are called they are chosen
We know this because
They teach.

W.H. Auden, 1907-1973
Reviewed by David Bunch

In Musee des Beaux Arts, W.H. Auden provides an important insight into the failure of self-absorption. The title of the poem comes from the name of the famous art museum in France that houses the painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Breughel. The painting depicts a beautiful, rural landscape with a man working in a field and a ship of commerce sailing on a calm and serene sea. Not far from the ship, a solitary human leg can be seen protruding out of the water in the bottom right corner. This is Icarus, the mythical figure who used wax wings to escape, but flew too close to the sun and fell from the sky when they melted. Auden weaves this striking scene and tragic hero together with other events, such as the birth of Christ, to give us a glimpse of our human condition from his vantage point.

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an importune failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

By James Crawford

I’m tired of murdering children-
The unborn are not asked if they want to live.
This goes beyond morals, right or wrong, and sin.
America is dying one aborted fetus at a time.
Perhaps America is already dead and rigor mortis has set in.