I received a really cool email from Adjoa Skinner, a very talented singer/songwriter who is a part of our community at Mosaic. (I have her on my iPod. I especially like her song “God Made Me Tall.”) After hearing the message I shared during the “Practical Wisdom” series, she wrote a couple of poems in response.
Here is the first one:
Practical Wisdom – How do I love people I don’t like?
It’s like no other time in history, what we’re living in right now
Change and hope and new discoveries, we dreamed would come somehow.
And somehow what we thought would be has happened and is past.
But first was spoken by the One whose faithfulness will last.
Who’ll come to lift the veils we place to blind the immature
Until the time we grow up and know the way for sure.
And what has been before by God, will be again for all.
To verify that all creation has a heavenly call.
Beauty in diversity revealing our own soul
We’re not meant to be all the same, letting others pay our toll.
But we’re meant to be honest and communicate in love
To let vengeance end quickly and let grace be enough.
Serving those who hurt us and loving those we hate
Even when our jealous streak attempts to satiate
The foolish base desire to judge and then condemn
the people who we’re nothing like, but act so much like them.
Let the Spirit guide you and in forgiveness break
the walls you build within your heart and from your freedom take.