Dear Reader,

This poem was written from Jeremiah 9:24, not as an ornament around the verse, but as an attempt to stand still inside it. The world teaches us to boast in what can be measured: skill, status, strength, cleverness, the harvest we can point to and call our own. Scripture does not deny that such things exist. It only refuses to let them be the last word. The Lord does not delight in our résumé. He delights in steadfast love, justice, and righteousness—and He practices them in the earth, not merely announces them from far away.

If you know Him, even a little, that knowledge is already more than enough to boast in. Not because you arrived at it by brilliance, but because He made Himself known. The poem is only a small echo of that claim.

Read it slowly. Then set it down and return to the verse itself. The poem is a door. The Scripture is the house.

— The Poet

Jeremiah 9:24
But let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.

Let him not boast in silver’s gleam,
nor in the tower of his name,
nor in the cleverness of schemes
that fade like smoke before the flame.

Let him not boast in strength of arm,
nor in the wisdom of the wise,
nor in the harvest of the farm
that withers when the season dies.

Boast only this: that you have known
the Lord who walks the wounded earth,
whose steadfast love is not a loan
but gift and gravitas and worth.

He practices the just decree,
He rights the wrong, He heals the torn;
He delights in righteousness, and He
is not a God of empty form.

So let the proud man close his mouth
and let the humble lift his song:
the knowledge of the Lord is truth,
and in that knowledge we belong.