Wednesday Words - Minor Prophets

It's another late night post today. My schedule has been a bit overloaded the last couple of days, so I've had to wait to take care of blogs until just before calling it a day.

Wednesday nights I teach a Bible reading workshop at Valley Christian Church. The Bible Pathways Class is intended to encourage people to develop consistent reading habits and to journal personal responses to the texts they have read. The reading plan we follow is available on the Useful Breath site.

With that in mind, it seemed appropriate to post a poem about the Bible. Enjoy!

The Minor Prophets
None of the minor prophets
knew that he was minor, of course. Habakkuk, I imagine,
thought that his visions earned him
standing as Ezekiel's peer, if not indeed Elijah's.
Then there was Obadiah,
who could be forgiven if he thought he might be a Moses.
How they would be remembered
Providence concealed from them all, though they could see the future.

Maybe it doesn't matter.
If you're on a mission from God, sent to rebuke a city
or to redeem a nation,
where by canon-makers you're ranked may be inconsequential.
Nor is the voice within you
any less authentic for not having a distant echo.
Seers of the world, be heartened.
Even minor prophets can have genuine revelations.

by Michael Lind, from Parallel Lives. © Etruscan Press, 2008.

PS - I like Lind's poem and think he makes a good point about life in a whimsical way. Just for the record, however, the only reason the prophetic books of the Old Testament canon are referred to as "major prophets" or "minor prophets" is their word-count, NOT their importance. Major = Long, Minor = Short, it's as simple as that.