Poetry Friday - One Solitary Life

In 1926; Dr. James Allan Francis told a story that has become a well-known poem all over the world. Being Good Friday, I want to share with you a slight variation of his poem that I wrote.

It seemed appropriate that on Good Friday; the poem of the week should be something more than just anything I could write up in a minute or two. Today is the anniversary of perhaps the most significant day in all of human history. And this poem explains why.

He was born in an unimportant village,
To a peasant woman,
And a man who was not his father.

He grew up in another unimportant village,
Where he was a carpenter,
Until he was thirty years old.

He never wrote a book,
He never held an office.
He never went to college,
He never saw a big city.
He never travelled more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born,
He did none of the things usually associated with greatness.

He had no credentials,
He had no qualifications,
He only lived to be thirty-three.
He had absolutely no reason to be anyone of significance.

His only friends ran away,
One of them denied him,
One of them turned him over to his enemies,
Who had a murderer released over him.

He was tried, beaten, stripped, and tortured.
He was nailed to a cross for the whole world to see.
While he hung there, dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing.
The only property he had on earth.

When he was dead,
He was laid in a borrowed grave,
Through the pity of a friend.

He was worshipped by his followers his whole life.
He was hunted by his enemies his whole life.

Two thousand years have come and gone,
And today he is the central figure of the human race,
And the leader of mankind's progress.
He is the most influential person that has ever lived.

No subject has been written about, spoken about, sung about, debated, argued, and fought over more that he.
There are more books, poems, songs, paintings, pictures, statues, speeches, meetings, gatherings, organisations, and buildings, that focus solely on him than any other subject put together.

All the armies that have ever marched,
All the parliaments that have ever sat,
All the kings that ever reigned,
All the inventions that have been invented put together,
Have not affected the world as much as he has.

Every year, the entire world celebrates his birth, mourns his death, and celebrates his resurrection.

The peasant boy from the unimportant town,
Jesus. That one solitary life.