I love the Lord and he loves me.
I won’t forget, and neither will he.
This is the poem that seven-year-old Christian Wiman handed to his pastor, no less, during the altar call. Young Wiman didn’t wait for a response or say a word, he simply ran to his bench. Shortly afterward, the pastor published Wiman’s poem in the Southern Baptist Convention newsletter.
“I gave him a poem,” Wiman says in this episode of The Russell Moore Show. “It was my gesture of salvation.”
In the decades that followed, Wiman struggled with his faith, suffered from cancer, and continued to find meaning in writing poetry. In this episode, he and Moore discuss poetry in Scripture, how Jesus engaged with suffering, and how poetry can help pastors in their preaching. They explain why poetry can be intimidating, the entry points for engaging with it, and how poetry can reveal the joy in our lives.
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
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“The Russell Moore Show” is a production of Christianity Today
Executive producers: Erik Petrik, Russell Moore and Mike Cosper
Host: Russell Moore
Producer: Ashley Hales
Associate producers: Abby Perry and McKenzie Hill
Director of Operations for CT Media: Matt Stevens
Audio Engineering by Dan Phelps
Video producer: Abby Egan
Theme song: “Dusty Delta Day” by Lennon Hutton
