Student Responses
to Puritan Poems from The Valley of Vision
Student responses are the original works of high school students, ages 14-16, and are shared with permission. Students were encouraged to connect with the text personally by relating personal experience, making observations about the world, translating the poem into modern language, or analyzing its figurative language. To read the Puritan poem that inspired each the journal reponse, click on the poem title.
Personal Experience Response
Personally, this prayer was incredibly powerful, and it spoke to me in a way that I didn’t think it could. For one thing, I realized the strength one prayer could truly have. Second, it reminded me of who I was before I found Christ. During those times, I was incredibly afraid of the dark, I was scared of death, and I felt like I had no purpose; I could only imagine the worst of situations. And when others talked to me about God, I didn’t believe anything they said. I knew they were different, but still their words and how they prayed seemed “silly” to me. When I came to Christ around eleven years old, I did not understand God’s power and who He was. I thought I had it all together, but I didn’t. I sought answers to my prayers, so I opened his Word, I prayed for his response, but I got nothing back. This made me very frustrated, and I started drifting. One day I was sitting in front of my Bible, and I realized then that I needed to truly repent and let the Holy Spirit into my life. I had always imagined prayer as a message being sent to God above, not a direct conversation with the Lord, and I never assumed that he would hear every word that I said. As I grow in the Lord, I learn more and more to cast my fear and doubts to him, just like Mary Chilton did in the book Almost Home: A Story Based on the Life of the Mayflower's Mary Chilton. This Puritan prayer ("The Spirit's Work") showed me how to speak with faith, as even the Puritans, with all of their intense struggles, understood the incredible goodness of the Lord, the full depth of their sin, and what happened on the cross.
Figurative Language Analysis
In this Puritan prayer, there are several instances where the author uses figurative language to help the reader visualize what he is saying. He begins the prayer comparing the disorder of his soul to creation, where God created beauty out of nothing and made order out of chaos. The author uses the metaphor of wanting his heart to be made pure as the Garden of Eden.
Another good metaphor is where he prays, “Lift the mists and darkness of unbelief; brighten my soul with the pure light of truth; make it fragrant as the garden of paradise.” The picture he's painting shows that when you don’t believe in God, it’s like being surrounded by mist, where you don’t have the understanding that God is with you and wants to guide you. But when you know Jesus, he lifts the mist and gives you guidance and purpose.
Later in the prayer, the author uses similes where he talks about Jesus’s crucifixion: “May I there see my sins as the nails that transfixed him, the cords that bound him, the thorns that tore him, the sword that pierced him.” He's comparing his sin to the tools that took part in crucifying Jesus, and it helps me to understand that it was MY sin that held him there. I pray that the Holy Spirit will deepen this knowledge in me, that I will be Christ-loving, sin-fleeing, and that I will not be deceived.
"Sleep"
Personal Response
Reading the poem from Valley of Vision titled "Sleep", I was reminded once again of the perfect rest that can be found only in God. Having gone through trials of epilepsy in the past, and now again in the recent month, I find myself often praying that God will “help me when I helpless lie, …when my mind is harassed by foreboding thoughts, when my eyes are held awake by personal anxieties”. Like the author of this poem, I’ve wrestled with fears and apprehensions of what the future may hold for me. I have, however, submitted my fears to God, knowing that although pain will dwell with me in this world I will “not shrink from a death that introduces me to the freshness of eternal youth”. Although I know that no nightmare in a seizure can separate me from God, I pray that “if dreams be mine, let them not be tinged with evil”. I have learned through many trials to rest in joy, and “commit myself to [God] awake or asleep”. Though I know not what the future may hold, I am content to rest in the arms of the one who has “a balm for every wound, a solace for every anguish, a remedy for every pain, [and] a peace for all disquietude”.
Personal Response
Vanity has been an subject of interest ever since my youth group studied the book of Ecclesiastes. The idea of being able to save yourself completely defeats any reason you would have to serve the Lord in the first place, and leads you further into vain things that only cause pain. “May I, a convinced and self-despairing sinner, find Jesus as the power unto salvation." These lines can pull a person out of a self-desparing mindset or out of a (falsely) self-empowering mindset which is built on worldly foundation about to crumble. The overall theology of the prayer is the comparison of God’s holiness to man’s sinful nature.
Why, as a Christian,do I forget God and return to my own "capabilities" so often? “Help me to be repaired to that cross, be crucified to the world by it, and in it find deepest humility” brings to mind that this problem might be a combination of two things. First, distance from God and his Word, and, second, failure to rely on both God’s love and law. The most notable figurative language in this passage is the repetition in the last section of the phrase “more thankful for his mercies”. This really drives the point of how many mercies there are to be thankful for.
Personal Response
“Keep me, for I cannot keep myself”. How true this indeed! These are words that I need to ask God more often when I feel I've fallen short in His eyes. Because if we as people think we can live without Him, our lives would be miserable and unfruitful. So, we all just have to give our hardships to God and He will guide us through them. This quote makes me think of all the times I have come to the Lord, to keep me with him and to help with my day to day life. For example, I have to rely on him to help me with time management, be kind and generous to people I might not like, work diligently at my part-time job, and even to finish this same paragraph. Even though we do in fact fall short, God will never leave us or forsake us and will be there on the very last day. In conclusion, it's amazing that this poem can be so concise but have such strong meaning.
"Pride"
Life Observation
“[To] dust…I shall return” (“Pride”). This statement is a humbling one, for it imparts that we humans are nothing more than dust from the Earth. One must have too much pride to believe they are anything more than that. Unfortunately, because of the Fall people have undertaken sinful ways, which includes pridefulness. In the end, as it says in the book of Ecclesiastes “all is vanity and a striving after wind” (ESV Bible, Ecc. 1.14), therefore what is the sense of pride? Why do our wicked minds infiltrate our thinking, causing us to believe we are mighty and the strong, perfect and put-together? Ultimately, pride will ruin a person's life; it will take over and rule that person. Every choice they make will be because they are “superior”: the food they consume, the clothes they wear, the car they drive, the house they own, and the friends the have. Consideration for anyone below them is out of the question. Anxiety will prevail and sicken a prideful being. They will constantly worry about their earthly possessions and status, but have no concept of how meaningless this evil world is compared to Heaven. Their toil will only turn back to dust with them.
Response to "Yet I Sin"
(Translation into Modern English):
Eternal Father,
You are greater than we could ever imagine,
But I am savage, blind to your ways;
I am ready to confess, but my heart is slow to feel,
I cannot repair myself.
I carry my soul to you; reforge me into a greater man,
Show me sin’s terror, so I may flee far from my ways.
My senses have been turned against you;
I have rebelled, chosen to serve a cruel master.
Give me mercy to mourn my apathy,
Show me the way of sinners is difficult,
that these paths are terrible paths,
that to depart from you is to lose all virtue.
I have seen the purity and beauty of your perfect law,
the happiness of those who follow it,
the dignity of the walk it calls for,
Yet still I disobey its rules
And violate its principles.
Your loving Spirit works in me,
brings me Scripture warnings,
speaks in astonishing prophecies,
entices me by secret whispers,
Though I choose the wrong path each time,
I resent and begrudge him,
I provoke him to abandon me.
For my sins, I beg you for absolution;
Work in me a meaningful and everlasting atonement;
Grant me a fully righteous sorrow
that shivers and honors,
trusts and loves,
a potent, holy grief;
That through the clarity of my confession
I may see more clearly the brightness
and glory of Christ’s redeeming cross.