Prayer and Sorrow

For this week I have read two more poems and found them very insightful. The first poem was Praying. This poem was beautiful. It took nature and turned it into something religious and spiritual. It referenced how when we pray it can be something simple or easy as weeds in a parking lot, or small stones. This gives a whole new approach to praying. So many times a lot of us are fearful to pray in public because we feel inadequate, or not spiritual enough. We think that the only people who can pray out loud or those who are leaders in the church. This cannot be correct because in fact, Jesus tells us himself to come to him with child-like faith. Child-like faith does not require big words or anything extravagant, it just requires trust. This poem does a great job explaining the simplicity Jesus wants when he asks us to pray. The second poem, The Uses of Sorrow discussed how to take something positive about being in a dark moment. This poem was short, but very to the point. The poem gives off the feel that we all understand what it feels like to receive a dark moment. It even specifies that we can, and often do receive dark gifts from the people we love the most. For me personally it is not that we only receive dark gifts from the ones we love, but these are often the only dark gifts I notice, because I only am hurt when the gift is from someone I love. If a stranger does something mean I almost expect it, but when someone I love hurts me, it crushes me. But then in the second stanza of the poem it discusses how even from our hardest heartbreak we can find the positive from it, something beneficial, or a lesson learned.