Nikki Grimes - Unvarnished Healing

Unvarnished Healing 

John 9:1-41 

by Nikki Grimes

There are those who insist 

gifts of speaking in tongues 

and heavenly healing 

belong to yesteryear, 

when Holy Spirit movement stories 

flowed from that old time religion. 

But were those mighty works of God 

merely once-upon-a-time? 

According to John, Jesus spoke of 

the "we" of this work, 

a ministry calling 

with no timelines, deadlines, 

or time limits implied. 

I heal, you heal, he/she/we heal 

whenever God moves through 

prayer and the laying on of hands, 

this work perfectly modeled 

by the Perfect One, himself 

on a particular Sabbath, when his mercy 

settled on a man sightless from birth. 

Curious, how the disciples' 

very first thoughts turned to 

whose sin was to blame for this blindness, 

while some Pharisees rebuked this rule-breaker rabbi 

for daring to work on the Sabbath. 

Which are we? 

Disciples or Pharisees? 

Will judgment cause us 

to miss the miracle? 

We are called to enter into 

all of God's good work, 

and to worship him with praise 

for his unvarnished healing.

©Nikki Grimes. All rights reserved.

I don't know that there's anyone who smiths words the way Nikki Grimes does. She will knock your socks off, no matter what she writes. Like the above poem or One Last Word, her book which uses the Golden Shovel form (and if you wanna know more about that form/write one yourself, here's the poet herself to tell you all about it).

 

Or beyond that, I predict you'll be dazzled if you read any of her broad range of books... like her award winning memoir, Ordinary Hazards (which got both a Printz and a Siebert Honor nod from the ALA). 

And if her current lineup of books isn't enough... look at what she's got coming down the pike this year alone - Southwest Sunrise in May and Kamala Harris: Rooted in Justice coming out in August. I mean, come on now. She will knock your socks off in so many ways that you'll be sockless all year... and you'll be glad of it, I say.