A Christmas Poem

Our God is far higher than the notes and rhymes

Of the greatest players and poets of all places and times

Yet He generously inhabits the most artless praise

From the hearts of contrite sinners believing His grace

In the city of David, God's light has shone

Look there in a stable, the Child is born

The angels here, in a holy throng 

Are heard angelically singing their beautiful song

They sing with glad tidings and good will toward men

But for them the same song is a requiem

For Heaven's High Prince of Peace has now

To our cold, dark world descended low

Clothed now in mortal form
To make the most miserable depths of Sheol His dorm

All this to save sinners; broken, contrite

Reconciled to Him; wayward hearts set aright

Our God is far deeper than sin, death and shame

To deliver us from these three things He came

It may be at one's darkest place
That one meets the loving Savior's face

Trembling now I'd

With these feelings inside

Of reverence and adoration

With words here confide

With six strings allied

A song of great celebration!

But alas! All my words and melody

Too insipid to compare with His rhapsody

Which He has composed from eternity

Even unto eternity

Let it, then, so be

Let Him write in me

Let it, then, so be

Let Him live in me

Conduct, in me

His own symphony

Subterranean Flood-Sick Blues

Genesis 7:11 provides and interesting detail concerning the Great Flood. "...on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened."

So as the Scriptures tell, there was water coming down in the form of rain for forty days; and water was also being released in vast quantities from great, broken-up, subterranean fountains. 

It is the view of Flood geologists that prior to the Flood, the tectonic plates were one whole, unbroken layer of the earth. In this view, the tectonic plates are the broken-up "fountains of the deep". 

Certainly, the Flood of Noah's time changed the face of the earth. Prior to that Flood, the earth was not as topographically extreme as it is in our time. There were hills and mountains from the time of creation. But there was nothing like the highest mountains or the lowest valleys and basins of our time. 

Most of the mountains on the earth at present are composed of sedimentary layers, which were laid down by the Flood, and have become bent and pushed up by shifting tectonic plates.

This explains why there are fossilized clam shells at the highest points of the earth. It also explains why bent layers of sedimentary rock are not fractured and broken. They were still soft when they were pushed up and bent by tectonic activity.

The topographical extremes of the post-Flood world ensure what God Himself decreed, that He will never flood the whole earth again, as He did in those days (Genesis 9:11-17).

But the final judgment of sin will come by fire. As the Scriptures tell: 

"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:10-13).