Bible: 5 Poetic Books

Lesson 2: JOB: You Get What You Deserve! ???

Inspiration and activities

The following writing activities will get you noticing some of the poetry in JOB, and hopefully, get you writing yourself too!

1. Personal journal. Think of a particularly challenging time of your life and write about these times in a private journal.

2. Look at the poetry! You can literally see over a hundred examples of parallelism in this chapter of the Bible. Note some of your favorites down, and then write some of your own about issues that matter to you. When you're finished, you'll have interesting pairs of lines that could be poems in and of themselves, or part of something bigger...

3. Simile:

Job 3:24

For sighing comes to me instead of food; my groans pour out like water.

A simile is a comparison of two things using "like" or "as" (or "seems" sometimes). Here, the aches and pains match up well with the food imagery. Write some similes of your own to describe EXTREME moods you've found yourself in (exhausted / energized, happy / sad, peaceful / angry...)

4. Sometimes, when we read about a tough situation in the newspaper or hear about something on TV, it affects us. Often, I take that negative news and put it down in a poem to "get it out of me". Here's an example of a poem that was created based upon several experiences:

a) Our local newspaper ran a series of articles on homeless people

b) I remember seeing everyone walk far around a homeless woman on the street near Pike Place Market in Seattle. The look in her eyes haunted me for a long time afterward.

c) Our church collects for missions regularly and part of their work involves the food bank and Higher Ground, a program for people who struggle with addictions or making decisions.

The following poem won first place in the Roux Press poetry contest (Spring 2004):

Homeless

Under a broken sky,

the day dark and gloomy with light,

she casts a skinny shadow,

drives life into a corner,

shelters herself in a temporary

booth of boards--

It is the end of the beginning.

She feels the darkness

rising, the melancholy

fate of the place exploding

in a cave of echoes.

her heart holds

remnants of hiding places,

secret rooms and hidden tunnels,

but few accounts of what really happened.

No one wants to know.

So she keeps quiet and has nightmares,

daymares, life-and-death struggles,

a slave of circumstance,

vanity, stubbornness, cruelty, failings.

she flees with whatever she can take

and escapes the buildings

that flow around her.

Innocence begins to crack.

Driven by anger and hatred,

and the revenge she so desperately seeks,

she walks out of her life.

and when she comes to die,

she discovers that she has not lived--

It is the beginning of the end.

Now take that disturbing issue, the one that "gets you" and create some images that you can work into your poem. Remember, the Bible itself doesn't avoid the tough issues: its pages include references to suicide, incest, rape, alcoholism...

Instead of avoiding an issue, deal with it by writing a poem.

ARE YOU READY FOR PSALMS? If so, full steam ahead!

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