What Will Your Verse Be?

It is amazing to me to consider all of the ways that I hear God speak.  Having grown up in a rigid church tradition, one would think we can only hear God in sermons on Sunday and from books and other materials produced only from a “church” printing press.

To think that I could hear God through Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, or have a spiritual moment in Leavenworth, WA in the middle of a spectacularly lit Christmas display while holding my wife’s hand – well, that would have been beyond belief thirty years ago in my understand of God and how he works.

I see God in so many ways and in so many places, you might think of me as a “worldly Christian writer” should I begin to list such times and places and experiences. 

And yet, that is my point. 

Let me continue with this thought, based on Walt Whitman’s poem.  The first part of this quote is taken from the movie Dead Poets Society starring Robin Williams.

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute.  We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.  And the human race is filled with passion.  And medicine, law, business, engineering; these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life.  But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. 

And then he quotes from Whitman:

O me! O life!

Of the questions of these recurring;

of the endless trains of the faithless,

of cities filled with the foolish;

what good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer: that you are here

that life exists and identity,

that the powerful play goes on

and you may contribute a verse.

Oh yes. That last line cinches it for me.

“… and you may contribute a verse”

And God expects your verse from you. And if you pass on without making your contribution to this world, what a sad hole you may have left.

In whatever state your life may be, YOU have a verse to write, a contribution to make to me and to my life; to your kin’s lives; to your neighbors and friends.

It matters not what your life looks like now. It matters not the condition in which you find yourself at this particular moment. There is still time to add to your verse.

Are you living an addicted lifestyle?

Are you once, twice or three times divorced?

Are you bankrupt?

Have you just won the lottery?

Are you bald?

Do you have hair on your knuckles?

Does your arthritis bother you at night?

You still have a verse to contribute. Yes, even YOU!

Read this passage slowly, pausing occasionally to think about the words.


1. O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.

3 You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.

4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.

7 Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?

8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

9 If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.

17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 I try to count them—they are more than the sand;

~Psalm 139: 1-18

This scripture tells me that God had a plan for you from the beginning. He put a verse inside of you expecting you and me to sound it out, live it out and proclaim our verses to the world.

May we do that very thing starting right now.

God is with you. Take the first step toward Him and He immediately meets you right where you are.

I will be praying for you.


P Michael Biggs
Offering Hope
Encouragement Inspiration
One Word at a Time