Under The Shroud Of Christ, Poem by Liza Sud

What an affirmative poem! The shroud is the burial cloth but death has no presence in these lines. The poem is one of discovery and the kind of humility in the presence of divinity that makes one joyous. It's not the abject abasement of the human self I find abhorent in expressions like Jonathan Edwards* who preached, SINNERS, IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD, ARE LIKE A SPIDER DANGLING OVER A HUGE FIRE BY ONE THREAD. Yuck! Why would a Creator-God create a creature for whom he had such contempt. The difference in your evocation of Christ is that He is revealing Himself to you so that your awareness of His presence increases your joy and your worship of Him is motivated by that joy. That is the blessing your poem shares with us readers. (*) Jonathan Edwards was a gifted preacher who presided over the last hurrah of Puritanism in America in the 1750s. He never spoke of God's mercy, only God's justice. And any form of pleasure was suspect in his mind. I would say: Preacher Edwards, who invented the Pleasures of Life? God Himself, right? Of course, He did. So to deny pleasure is to deny a gift of God, right? A child understands this, Preacher Edwards, why don't you?

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