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This work of poet and Christian theologian Jerome Blanco holds the tension of devastation in the world with the promise of God's restoration from Joel 3.
Joel 3
The Day of the Lord
By
Jerome Blanco
Credits:
Curated by:
Rebecca Testrake
2017
Poetry
Primary Scripture
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Prophetic passages on God's eventual judgment and restoration of the world can feel very distant for me. As I wrestled with the third chapter of Joel, I couldn't help but think these coming mysteries were lifetimes away, especially considering all the weight of what is happening in the world today. Despite God's dual promises of vengeance and restoration, I wonder about what good those promises have for those suffering now. Are the promises of abundant milk and wine (3:18) satisfying enough? What about the promises of God's vengeance on the wicked (3:21)? The prophecies of Joel certainly deliver a sense of hope, but that hope that comes from a promised future sits in tension with the painful realities of the present.
In this poem, I recall the refugees that I met during a brief time I spent in Europe. Many expressed a hope in God despite terrible circumstances, but who were of course also weighed down with unimaginable despair. God was often what kept them going, but they weren't without fear. In the text, I specifically refer to a man I met from Homs, Syria, who spoke to me about both these things.
The poem's form is modeled on this not-yet-ness of God's restoration. Excluding the final line, the poem is written in six stanzas of six lines each. Six, here, exemplifies that longing for completion‚ seven being the satisfying number of wholeness in God's creation. The final line acts as a promised seventh line to the final stanza, and as a promised seventh stanza to the poem as a whole. The prophecies in Joel are already in our hands. Christians can hold to the truth that God's promises will be fulfilled. And yet we are forced to wait restlessly for them in the meantime, as we wait for the day of the Lord‚ the day of judgment and restoration that is yet to come.
Spark Notes
The Artist's Reflection
Jerome Blanco is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary and is an MFA candidate at New York University’s Writers Workshop in Paris, where he is studying fiction writing. He was born in Manila but currently calls Southern California home.
Jerome Blanco
About the Artist
Jerome Blanco
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As for the sinners, so they say, the hand of God will someday descend from heaven to pick hem off like forked lightning.
The Day of the Lord
Jerome Blanco
As for the sinners, so they say,
the hand of God will someday
descend from heaven to pick
them off like forked lightning.
The promise for saints: streams
of wine, water for life, a heaven-land
of flowing milk—but all this
a long time from now. Today,
we watch good men murdered
in the streets, hear cries of wounded
women wrecked, see children made
orphans at the bomb’s thunderclap.
Once, I met a man who feared
the Lord, who hailed from hell-torn
Syria and showed me pictures
of his rubble home—nothing left
but stones on stones. I trust in God,
he said with hope in the words
of the prophets. But the weight
of exile can bring a man’s shoulders
low, pull his head down towards
the foreign ground—like he might
sink into the earth, slowly first,
then suddenly, like a shot. When I go,
I swear, he is ankle-deep. What good
the promised justice eternities away,
that a man’s short life cannot stretch
to reach? What help is heaven milk
while killers dance in dusty Homs?
If God withholds the wine, then it
had better be sweet, overflowing so
that it pours back in waves, cascading
over all the years that my friend is made
to wait. When God smites with his left,
I’d like to see his right dig deep, pulling
the buried from the dirt, raising them high
like the acacias in the Lord’s green valley
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As for the sinners, so they say, the hand of God will someday descend from heaven to pick hem off like forked lightning.
