I return with...poetry?

So it has obviously been a while since I've posted anything here.  I'd like to think it is due to being overwhelmed with other stuff in my life.  Alas, I'm fairly confident there is a fair bit of laziness that has contributed.  Nevertheless, my journey has continued and our Prepared Christian class has continued to meet throughout the summer months. I do have a backlog of posts to make.  Fortunately for me, my implementation of GTD seems to be holding up fairly well and I've captured all of the To-Do's for the pending posts.

Before getting into the subject of this post, a couple items that might be noteworthy.  I am currently participating in a 90-day Labor Day Challenge to read the entire New Testament by Labor Day.  Pastor Mark is heading it up as he is posting the American Standard Version (not the "New") on-line and each day as he posts it, it becomes a reading for that day on the plan.  The posts themselves are over at the Graham Friends Church web site, but I get to them via Facebook posts he makes each day.  I have to say it has been one of the better uses of FB that I've come across.

The other item worth mentioning is that I am currently trying to get hooked up Wycliffe Associates as a volunteer.  Wycliffe Associates supports the larger Wycliffe organization which is engaged in Bible translation in an effort to spread the Word to people in their native language.  Seemed like a good fit for my gifts.  I have gone through the process of being approved as a volunteer.  Just waiting for them to identify a position for me now.

I'm also looking at Voice of the Martyrs and trying to figure out whether there is anything there I might be able to help with.  The stories of Christians fighting persecution throughout the world are very powerful imo.  May hook up with the Be-A-Voice Network.

So, that is enough catching up.  On to the "real" subject of this post.  Back in the middle of June, one of our weekly lessons was on the history of the Old Testament.  In working through that material, one of the items we ran across was the concept of antecedent texts.  These are texts that are referred to in the OT, but which we have no copies of to know what they said.  Since they are referred to in the OT, they existed before the OT section that includes the reference was written - that is, antecedent.  So to some extent, the OT (ok, sections) was "built" using these other texts.

To demonstrate this, Pastor Mark introduced us to "found poetry".  Found poetry takes words, phrases, sentences from other sources, and then puts them together to create a new work (see, kind of like taking an antecedent text and then adding to it to produce new, inspired text).  As an exercise, we went through eleven pages of our textbook for class and picked out a word, phrase or sentence from each page and put them together as a poem.  One could do some cleaning up if they wanted.  But I am leaving mine it its raw form.  So, without further ado, here is the found poetry (untitled at present) I came up with during our class:

Neither of them thought much of the idea

They cannot recognize the risen Jesus

He opened their minds so they could understand

These actors and props are an integral part to God's self-revelation

God called

You will be enticed to turn away

Culture shift is witnessed

Political and religious upheaval

Set the stage

The one true God's character

Challenging the community