Poems and Short Features

The Napkin

If you were a guest at a meal in an ancient Jewish home, you would arrive to find a low table and no chairs (not as Leonardo da Vinci imagined it in the painting on this issue’s cover). You would recline on a pillow as you shared the meal with others. There would be a napkin neatly folded at your place and no silverware. You ate with your hands.

If at the end of the meal you felt your host had been gracious and the hospitality warm and inviting, you would lightly crumple your napkin and place it on the table. That meant you had enjoyed the meal, had appreciated the welcome, and looked forward to being there again. But if for some reason you did not expect to return, you folded the napkin and put it in its original place. It was a way of saying, “I will not be back here again.”

This may be why we read about a folded napkin off to one side when Peter impulsively rushed into the tomb where Jesus had been buried: “Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed” (John 20:6-8).

What made this other disciple believe? Was it simply the empty tomb? Or might it have been that napkin, lying separately, neatly folded? He may have seen that napkin and thought to himself, “Jesus is telling us he will never come back to this place [the grave] again.”

The apostles were so familiar with Jesus’ life, his teachings, and his habits. His death came over them like a pall. But his resurrection had an even greater effect as that dark covering was lifted and their lives became invigorated. His resurrection truly opened a new and living way.

Are our lives similarly affected? Do we have as great an awareness and appreciation for what our master did for us as they had? Have our lives been invigorated by the power of Jesus’ resurrection? As we approach the Memorial of his death, let us recommit our lives to him by spending more time with the Scriptures, being more careful in prayer, and looking for daily opportunities to share the truth with those around us.

—Tim Alexander

If We’d Been There

If we had lived in Jesus’ day
   How faithful we’d have been;
We’d not have slept but vigil kept,
   If we’d been with him then.

If we had lived in Jesus’ day
   His feet we would have washed,
We’d not have waited for another
   Upon him to attend.

And in his hour of trial and need
   We near to him had been.
When his forsook, we’d have remained
   So very near to him.

When on his way to Calvary
   We would have volunteered
To aid him with the heavy load;
   If we’d been with him there.

We cannot serve so person’ly
   For he’s no longer flesh,
But risen now to heights divine,
   Forever free from pain.

But even since he’s glorified
   His words do us instruct,
As done to him, things done to his;
   So dear to him his own.

To us the priv’lege doth remain
   And we may do for him
By waking to the needs of his,
   Still in the “Narrow Way.”

The feet of him are with us still;
   Still weary trav’lers tread,
And these we ever may refresh
   By living waters spread.

In helping with another’s cross
   Our love we show for Him,
And thus he knows what we’d have done
   If we’d been there with him!

—Poems of the Way, p. 73.

Jesus of Nazareth

In the gray twilight of a dreary morn,
A prisoner stood, defenseless and forlorn,
While, to a Roman judge, with boisterous breath,
His fierce accusers clamored for his death.

It was the Christ, rejected and abused;
The King of kings, his sovereign claim refused;
The Son of God, abandoned and betrayed,
An outcast, in the world which he had made.

It was his chosen people whose demand
That timid judge was powerless to withstand;
And, while their baseless charges he denied,
He gave their victim to be crucified.

His chosen people! those he loved and blest;
Whose little ones he folded to his breast;
Who cried more fiercely, as unmoved he stood,
“On us, and on our children, be his blood!”

Oh, Holy Savior! may thy grace reverse
The dreadful import of that reckless curse;
And, on their children, thy atonement prove
“The blood of sprinkling,” through Redeeming Love!

—Francis De Haes Fanvier (Reprints, p. 843)

The Lonely Olive Mill

Then cometh Jesus with them into a place called Gethsemane [oil press].
—Matthew 26:36

There's a peaceful vale in a sunny land
   Where the hills keep guard around,
And the soft breeze stirs the olive trees
   And the grass that clothes the ground.

And in the hush and solitude
   Where even the birds are still,
There stands untended and alone
   An ancient olive mill.

Through the long bright day the mill wheel turns
   And the fruit is crushed by the stone,
And drips in silence the fragrant oil
   In silence and alone.

But somewhere out in the circling hills,
   Unseen, unheard, unknown,
The Master of the olive mill
   Is mindful of his own.

So many hours the wheel must turn,
   And stone on stone must grind,
And then he will come to his olive mill,
   His need of oil to find.

He knows how heavy the weight must be,
   How long to let it lie
Ere he can gather the precious oil
   And throw the refuse by.

O child of God, are you being crushed
   'Neath trial, pain or woe?
No eye to pity, no ear to hear,
   No voice to whisper low?

Alone in your Gethsemane,
   Christ watches with you there.
He will not suffer one ounce of weight
   More than your strength can bear.

He chasteneth but to purify;
   He crusheth but to raise;
In love he worketh his blessed will
   To his glory's endless praise.

In our affliction, afflicted still
   He leaveth us not alone;
He will not forget, he will not forsake,
   He is mindful of his own.

—Annie Johnson Flint, Songs of the Nightingale, p. 90