My Simple Life

The Day 26 prompt at NaPoWriMo today (where incidentally my post of yesterday was featured) is to write a persona poem, which is a poem in the voice of someone else. I chose to write in the voice of John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and who penned the Gospel of John, 3 epistles, and Revelation.

My Simple Life

Mine was a simple life
Catching fish with my dad and brother
Going to the synagogue on the Sabbath
Always honoring my dear sweet mother

Along comes this Nazarene
He wants James and me to be fishers of men
I don’t really understand quite what he means
Yet we drop everything to follow him then

Life is still simple, but not the same
We follow him as he teaches us about God
The Pharisees and Priests don’t like him at all
They try to trick him, call him a fraud

But the miracles he performs
Make me believe he’s Messiah
He fed 5,000, calmed a storm, healed the sick
He must be the one foretold by Jeremiah

All the prophets predicted
He would come to rescue us one day
I can’t hardly believe it’s happening in my time
After Israel for centuries from God did stray

When I saw him transform
On the mountain he became a magnificent light
Peter and James saw it too, we were frightened
We knew we had seen a glorious sight

I trust him with my life
He calls me the disciple whom he does love
Even when I vie for first place in his band
Of disciples who sometimes push and shove

Now he tells us he’s the lamb
Fulfilling the Passover his body is given
We don’t understand what he’s saying
That through him all our sins are forgiven

He prays in the garden
Where we often come to pray together
But this prayer is different, such anguish
Still we fall asleep, lulled by the weather

He’s arrested and we flee
By the Sanhedrin he’s unfairly and illegally tried
Handed over to the Romans for punishment
And Pilate decrees he be unjustly crucified

I stood at the cross
Bewildered by this unexpected turn of events
As he prays for the Father to forgive them
Not one among the Sanhedrin repents

They thought that it was over
They buried him in a borrowed garden tomb
But he promised he’d return and he did
He left the grave like a baby from the womb

After he appeared to us
He returned to his heavenly throne
Then he sent us the great Counselor
As he promised not to leave us alone

Many years later on Patmos
In exile I am given a vision of his grace
He will come again to rescue his people
All sin, pain, and tears he will erase