Previous | Next 

POEM
power seed

Mark Phillips

(“If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:20)

What is this seed,
this tiniest seed,
powerful to move a mountain?

Where is the power, the signs, the wonder,
where the great moving in my soul?

Power is full of noise, smoke and shaking.
Power is heard, felt, seen. Where is this power,
the jet engine, thunderous in its interruption?
Where is this power,
the atom split wide?
Where is this power,
the lightning smack-cracking in the sky?
We understand power;
Wall Street cuts a deal.
We understand power;
nations rise and fall.

Heaven’s power’s a seed.
Hidden, it does its best work.
Slowly it moves the mountain.
Noiselessly it works.

Someone trampled it today, going to get the paper,
new pup scarcely missed digging
it up.
This seed does not shout, has no announcement to make.
Transformed by life within,
it moves the mountain, clod by clod.
Quieter than most,
slower than we like, Heaven has time.

Forgot about that seed today, that tiny seed planted deep, till
I
saw
the sprout
had moved aside earth’s mound,
peeked above the collar set round.

It had been working all along, this tiniest
quietest
hidden
power.
Mountains move at its strength
slipping into the sea.

Let me be patient as it grows,
this power-seed within. Let the neverwill
become now by its persistent uprising. Mountains,
be cast into the sea; impossibilities gone.
Power-seed, faith, tiny and real,
take over this doubting soul.

Mark Phillips lives in Devils Lake, ND.

Previous | Next 

Last modified January 31, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
Masthead and usage information.