Question

2. What does the poet mean by sin's seductive art?​

Answer 1

Answer:

little while ago, as I was flipping through my copy of Streams in the Desert – a devotional compilation of quotes, verses, and poetry, by L.B. Cowman, I came across an old poem.

I say old for two reasons. Firstly, it was written in the 1800’s, but secondly, it’s old to me. I found it a couple years ago, and it wasn’t something I had just recently discovered.

The poem goes thus:

“I walk’d through the woodland meadows, where sweet the thrushes sing

And found on a bed of mosses, a bird with a broken wing

I heal’d its wound and each morning it sang its old sweet strain

But the bird with the broken pinion never soar’d as high again.

I found a young life broken by sin’s seductive art

And touched with a Christlike pity, I took him to my heart.

He lived with a noble purpose, and struggled not in vain

Yet the life that sin had stricken never soar’d as high again.

But the bird with a broken pinion kept another from the snare

And the life that sin had stricken raised another from despair

Each loss has its compensation, there is healing for every pain

Yet the bird with the broken pinion never soars as high again”.

– Hezekiah Butterworth

This poem haunts me.

It has haunted me since the first day I read it and cried because it spoke my true deepest fears.

I am terrified that it is true – that indeed, the bird with the broken pinion will never soar as high again, that even if by some miracle I do recover, that I will never be what I once was.

Because that is what this poem says. That sin damages you, and although you may be healed, you will never be truly whole again.

Although you may be useful as an example of what not to do – you may help prevent others from making your same mistakes – there is no such thing as a fresh start. You will always bear the scars. You will always be chained by your past, even if the chains are small and few, they will always remain.

What this poem says is that, while you may be mended, you will never be whole. You can never be new again.

And that terrifies me on a level far deeper than even my fear of never being loved for who I truly am.

If, no matter how struggle, no matter how hard I fight, I will never be on par with the man or woman who has never been broken, never fallen, never screwed up, then why on earth would I keep fighting a hopeless battle?

And it’s all fine and well to say that I have been forgiven, I am redeemed, but, I am terrified that this poem is what’s truly accurate.

Because even if you recover, the scars will always remain. You will always have a weakness for certain things. You will never be able to see some things the same way again, and, to a degree, it’s true. Pain changes you. I will never be the innocent child I once was.

But….I discovered something else, curiously enough, while searching the web for the author, so I could share this poem with a friend.

See, apparently I wasn’t the only one haunted by the message of this poem. A certain anonymous prisoner, when this poem was sung one Sunday at the prison where he was doing time, burst out in despair that, indeed, if this were true, then any struggle on his part to live a better life would all be for naught. In his words, “If what you have said is true, then there is no hope for me, or for any man in this room”.

And the singer stopped as he realized that what this man said was true, and later that night he poured his heart out to God, explaining that he could no longer sing something with all the emphasis on wrath and never once mention the grace and love and mercy of God.

The outcome? A fourth verse. It goes like this..

“But the soul that comes to Jesus is saved from every sin.

And the heart that fully trusts Him shall a crown of glory win.

Then come to the dear Redeemer, He’ll cleanse your every sin.

By the grace He freely gives you, You’ll soar higher yet again”

I love that.

Because, in Christ, all things are made new. In Christ, the bird with the broken pinion soars higher, the life that sin has stricken is cleansed and washed and remade.

In Christ, I am no longer bound by my past, it doesn’t have to limit me, or control me, or dictate what I am capable of. It is not the sum of my parts, it does not define my soul. It can be just that – my past.

And I’m not naive enough to believe that it will never come back around to haunt me, but it doesn’t have to dog my every footstep either

Because He says that I am made new, He says I am clean, and by His grace, I can fly once more.