God Is the Best Judge

by Walt Garlington (June 2024)

Who will judge the rightness of Prophet Moses
Who rejected the riches of Pharoah’s court
To wander forty years in the wilderness
And die alone outside the Promised Land?
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Or the choice of the Apostles, James, John,
Andrew, Peter, who left their fishing nets,
And Matthew his office of tax collector,
To follow the Christ, Who had no place to lay His Head?
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Shall the imperious, impersonal marketplace,
Which stamps a value upon beans and bread,
Weigh the worth of a man’s soul and its acts?
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By what rule shall we measure the martyrs’ glory?
They whose beauty was broken on torture wheels,
Whose youth was crushed out beneath stones and steel,
Whose old age was honored with the scorching flame?
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Shall the professional neo-gladiators
Show them the prototype of a great man?
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Will someone criticize the hidden saints,
The monks and nuns and hermits fleeing men
To find God their Creator and Savior
Within cramped caves, upon heaving ocean waves,
In dense forests and sandy, barren deserts?
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Who shall—the fame-famished internet star?
–
Systems are inhumane, and man is a crooked rod,
But Christ shall render to each a perfect reward.
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Walt Garlington was born and raised in that part of Dixieland called Louisiana. A chemical engineer by training, he has spent the last several years writing full-time. He has written essays and poems for The Hayride, New English Review, The Tenth Amendment Center, The Abbeville Institute, Reckonin’, Katehon, Geopolitica, and USA Really. He writes regularly at his own web site, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.

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