Sunset Praises: Poetry with a Purpose

Following my graduation from AFIT in 1964, the class had a party and I thought it would be fun to write a humorous poem having a stanza about each of the class members to read and entertain everyone. The poem was a success and launched my career as a poet. After several years of funny poems at the office we experienced a period of sickness just prior to Christmas. The circumstances were serious enough that I decided a funny poem was not appropriate. I wrote my first poem of a serious nature called “The Real Meaning of Christmas." Because the poem was well received, I started writing both Christmas and Easter poems.

Over the years many people asked me if I had ever considered publishing a collection of poems. Someone suggested a collection covering the life of Christ. After all I had His birth covered by the Christmas poems and His death and resurrection covered by the Easter poems. All I needed to do was fill in the middle, a much more difficult task than I first anticipated. I used a Harmony of the Gospels listing of the events in the life of Christ and read each reference to find those that I felt were appropriate for a poem. The result is the collection of 172 poems in my book “That Ye Might Believe." They are arranged in the order of the events so the book itself is a Harmony of the Gospels. On each poem I included the references to the appropriate Gospels and the title of the event. In addition there are six indexes. The first is an index of Titles followed by a Harmony of the Gospels index. This index lists all the events with the appropriate references and a reference to my poems. The remaining four are for each Gospel, showing in chapter and verse order, which poem is associated with each reference. These cross-referenced indexes make this collection an easy to use Bible Study Resource. Pastors, Teachers and individuals can easily find a poem to read for additional insight to the meaning and importance of the passage they are studying.

My prayer is that everyone that uses “That Ye Might Believe” will be enlightened as to the importance of making a personal decision to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and enjoy the promise of eternal life.