There have been times in the history of the Christian faith in which poetry played a key role in believers’ devotion to the Lord. There were eras in which the work of Christian poets was respected and even lauded. But that was then and this is now. While we still value poetry in the form of songs, most of us pay scant attention to reading or writing poetry. There could be any number of explanations for this, though I am inclined to blame the decline of formal verse (i.e. defined forms of poetry) and the rise of free verse (i.e. neglecting rhyme and meter), much of which is enough to cause the best of us to give up on poetry altogether. Yet as we dig through the archives of our faith we can find vast troves of lovely, meaningful, skillful, devotional poems. In Poetry of Redemption:An Illustrated Treasury of Good Friday and Easter Poems, Leland Ryken has compiled some of the best of these poems and themed them around the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. “This book is an anthology of poetic devotionals on the events of Holy Week and their meaning,” he explains in the opening pages. “Although the entries can be read in the days before and during Holy Week, the book is not organized according to a schedule of daily readings tied to the calendar. One can read this anthology anytime, using any timetable, covering as many of the entries at a single reading as one chooses.” The poems are … Continue reading Poetry of Redemption