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Sanctify Our Words, Our Speech, Our Deeds by Debbie Harris

13 Tuesday Oct 2026

Posted by in Christ-centered poetry, Christian Poetry, Exalting Jesus Christ, Holy Bible, Inspirational, Jesus Christ, King of Kings

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Dear Reader,

I was recently blessed and honored to return to the beloved and precious campus of Bob Jones University, where I was blessed to grow up, for the funeral of my beloved mother. She served as a Professor there for 54 years in Speech and Drama. Our family was moved beyond measure as we were surrounded by comfort, love, care, concern, and provision. It was as if Jesus Himself was wrapping us in His tender mercies, comfort, and love. What a beautiful picture of how the body of Christ is meant to treat one another.

What a contrast this is with the world, where such surrounding care is indeed not the case. And how tragic it is when, even among the Saints of God, we fail to guard our tongues—when gossip, slander, harsh criticism, murmuring, and cutting speech replace the kindness, encouragement, appreciation, gratitude, and love that should mark true believers.

These genuine words and deeds that we experienced are treasures that money cannot buy. May the Lord sanctify our words, our speech, and our deeds, that we might better reflect Jesus Christ and the tender mercies we have received.

With grace,
The Poet

Proverbs 16:24 —

Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.

Genuine words and deeds
of kindness, encouragement,
appreciation, gratitude, and love
are treasures that money cannot buy.

Kind words are not small.
They settle like light
on weary shoulders,
naming what is good
when it is easy to miss.

Encouragement costs little
and returns multiplied—
a hand on the back,
a sentence that steadies,
a refusal to join the tearing-down.

Gratitude, spoken or shown,
rewrites the atmosphere
of a room, a church, a home.
Love that is patient with speech
refuses the easy cut
and chooses the harder, kinder path.

Such gifts should be seen in all
true believers. Yet lack of tongue control
is so prevalent in the Saints of God
today—gossip, slander, harsh criticism,
murmuring, and cutting speech.

These remain the marks
that money never measures
and that true believers
are still called to carry.
How tragic is this! How tragic!

Sanctify our words,
our speech, our deeds.

Mercies New Every Morning: The Unbreakable, Cross-Bought Diamond of Our Triune God by Debbie Harris

13 Tuesday Oct 2026

Posted by in Christian Poetry, Exalting Jesus Christ, Holy Bible, Inspirational

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Dear reader,

These lines began as an overflow—an attempt to speak of a mercy that keeps arriving, fresh and unspent, with every sunrise. I have let the language rise with it, piling word upon word, because the reality itself feels larger than any single phrase can hold. May you find, somewhere in the light of the unbreakable diamond (mercy that cannot be scratched or shattered) or the kaleidoscope of morning, a reminder that this mercy is for you: unending, unshatterable, and new again today.

—the poet

Lamentations 3:22–23

It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

Psalm 103:8, 11

The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy… For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.

Romans 8:38–39

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Hebrews 4:16

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

1 Peter 1:3

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Oh, His gracious, glorious, generous, golden mercy

that is new every morning

gives us unending, unshatterable, cross-bought hope,

grace, and enduring love

that can never be taken away.

For this undeserved, majestic, marvellous, mighty, overwhelming mercy

is like a searing, sovereign, unbreakable diamond—

blazing with infinite, unquenchable light,

harder than any hammer, hotter than any furnace,

brighter than ten thousand suns,

and utterly untouched, unscarred, unconquered

by every demonic fury, every dark assault, every hellish pursuit!

Oh, revel, royally redeemed—

for as the sun rises every morning in blazing, world-waking glory,

so the mercy of our triune God

erupts, explodes, and thunders upward

in a living kaleidoscope of unending colors—

crimson fire, molten gold, sapphire flame, and white-hot radiance—

that never fades, can never fail, will never dim,

and will always be gloriously, triumphantly, eternally renewed

every sunrise!

Oh, the gracious, glorious, generous, golden mercy

that is new every morning

is the spiritual riches

that give us ceaseless, victorious, triumphant

joy, strength, and an unending, eternal hope.

This keeps the free surg

The Quiet Rooms Where the Old Works Stayed: A Poem Against the Destruction of True Beauty By Godless, Christless Ideologies by Debbie Harris

11 Sunday Oct 2026

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Dear Reader,

These lines were written under the conviction that beauty is not a human invention but a reflection of the One who made all things “very good,” and that the face of Christ is the true Image of the invisible God. The Cross stands as both the measure of love and the judgment of every lesser standard.

Where, then, are the artists in the line of Michelangelo—those who still love to paint, to draw, and to sculpt the sacred? Where are the hands that once labored for years over a single ceiling or a single figure because they believed the visible could bear witness to the Word made flesh? The ideologies named in the poem did more than prefer new styles. They taught many to distrust proportion, skill, and the long attention that once let sacred images speak of Christ. In doing so they turned from the very gifts by which the Church has, for centuries, sought to make the invisible visible.

If this poem calls to mind any work that still points beyond itself to Christ, or any face that refuses to be reduced to theory, then it has served its small purpose. The true Image remains. He is not waiting for our permission.

—The Poet

They came with manifestos, sharp as knives,
Progress’s prophets, liberalism’s scribes,
And Marx’s heirs who measured every line
By class and creed instead of the divine.

They called the marble cold, the oil too bright,
The sonnet’s form a cage that blocked the light.
True proportion was a bourgeois lie,
And harmony a tool to pacify.

They smashed the icons, stripped the altar bare,
Declared the painted Word a snare,
And taught that flesh made God was mythic claim—
Too particular, too bound by name.
The face of Christ became a problem:
Too human, too untheorized, too solemn.

They prized the broken, elevated pain,
Declared the beautiful a tool of gain.
A body that once bore the weight of sin
And rose was now a symbol to begin
Again in pure abstraction—form erased
Lest anyone should meet a living face.

Yet in the quiet rooms the old works stayed,
Unmoved by theory, still by light arrayed.
The hand that carved the thorn-crowned brow
Still speaks what every manifesto disavows.
The eye that sought proportion, line, and grace
Finds in the Cross the measure of true space.

They tried to bury truth beneath the new,
But beauty answers only what is true.
The Word made flesh does not require their vote.
He stands where every theory falls remote—
The Image of the Father, once despised,
Still drawing every eye that looks and sees.

The Civilization That Lives on a Vine It Hates by Debbie Harris

08 Thursday Oct 2026

Posted by in Christ-centered poetry, Christian Poetry, Exalting Jesus Christ, Holy Bible, Inspirational

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Dear Reader,

These lines do not quarrel with compassion, nor with law, nor with the care of the weak. The poem grants them. It speaks instead against a quieter treason: to live on the fruit of a faith and refuse the root that bore it. A people may walk for years in the shade Christ planted—compassion, restraint, the worth of the small—and still lift the axe against the Vine. The stanzas ask only what remains when the source is severed and the harvest is still demanded, as if sweetness could outlive the life that made it.

The Poet

John 15:1–6 (KJV)


I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

They love the mercy Christians learned to show,
the care of weak and poor, the ordered peace,
the schools and laws by which the nations grow,
the hope that tells the captive to release.

They walk the orchards older faith had planted,
and praise the fruit, and call the harvest good;
they drink the wells where charity was granted,
and take the sweetness as their native food.

Yet when the root is named—the wounded Lord,
the cross that fed the branches from its side—
they turn, as if the very name were sword,
and scorn the life by which the fruit is tied.

They keep the apples, cut the living tree,
and wonder why the orchard starts to die;
for fruit cannot outlast the source, nor be
itself once faith and root are set aside.

A Hymn Of Provision by Debbie Harris

06 Tuesday Oct 2026

Posted by in Exalting Jesus Christ, Holy Bible, Inspirational

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Dear Reader,

Have you ever been overwhelmed by the provision of God? Not the idea of it, but the thing itself arriving when the jar was low, the day already spoken for, the map still saying sand. A morning portion. A meal that outlasted the worry. Rain on a field you had already given up.

This poem is a record of that habit. It keeps to an older measure, the heroic couplet, because provision often comes in pairs: enough, and then enough again. The figures are mostly the old ones—manna, ravens, the jar, the lilies, the later rain—not because the present is empty, but because those stories already know the shape of what still happens.If you have been carried that way, you will recognize the portions.

If you are in the stretch before the morning, the poem is not an argument. It is a place to set the empty cup and wait for the hand that still sets the table.

—the poet

Matthew 6:28–30, in the King James Version:

**And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

Before the field is broken by the hand,
the cloud is loaded and the season planned.
He sends the rain the way a house sends bread,
and wakes the seed that lay as good as dead.
The desert, which has nothing of its own,
finds in the morning what the night had sown:
a thin white covering no sickle cut,
enough to answer hunger, not to glut.
What yesterday could save will fail by noon;
the faithfulness is measured to the sun.
The ravens find the man no road can reach,
and leave their portion, and return to each
their ordinary sky. They do not know
the name they carry, only where to go.
A widow’s jar, drawn down almost to dust,
will not admit that this must be the last.
The flask keeps pace with what the cooking needs;
the flame continues after worry pleads.
What holds here is not wealth laid up in grain,
but oil that answers oil, and meal that answers meal.
See how the lilies take their cloth and wear
what no one wove, and finer than a king could bear.
The sparrow does not plant or bind or keep,
and still is fed, and still is not too cheap
to count. He dresses grass that burns to smoke,
and fills the throat that has no word it spoke.
If field and bird are answered without speech,
what finer need is set beyond His reach?
The table laid in front of those who hate
is not a show of surplus, but of state.
The later rain arrives when mouths are dry,
and barns that stood wide open crowd the sky.
A river breaks where every map said sand;
the rock, once struck, becomes a watered land.
He leads beside the streams that bring men back,
and spreads a pasture where the ground was black.
The cup is not a measure, but a tide;
it climbs the rim, and does not drop, and does not hide.
What we call extra, heaven counts as due—
the faithfulness that keeps, and starts anew.

The Problem of Persistent Unkindness:Why Mean Christians Are A Failure, Not A Contradiction by Debbie Harris

05 Monday Oct 2026

Posted by in Christ-centered poetry, Christian Poetry, Exalting Jesus Christ, Holy Bible, Inspirational, Jesus Christ, King of Kings, Triumphal Entry

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Dear Reader,

Christians are commanded to be kind. Scripture names kindness among the fruit of the Spirit, along with love, patience, and gentleness, and it tells believers to put away anger, malice, and a cutting tongue. When a Christian stays unkind, that is a real failure, not a small one.This poem does not excuse that failure. It only rejects a shortcut: the idea that a mean Christian is a contradiction in terms, or proof that no one is truly in Christ. The Bible holds both things at once. It commands the fruit of the Spirit, and it also says believers still struggle, still sin, and still need correction. Some who claim the name do not live it. Others do, and remain unfinished.So persistent unkindness is a problem. It is not, by itself, proof the claim was empty.

May all Christians seek to cultivate consistent, Christlike kindness.

The Poet

Ephesians 4:31–32, King James Version:

Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.

Jude 1:22 (KJV)

And of some have compassion, making a difference.

The claim and the conduct do not agree
as neatly as the tidy phrases do.
To stand in Christ is not to stand set free
from every bitter word that still rings true.

The old man lingers in the borrowed name,
and tongues that bless can still be edged with spite;
the vineyard shows both fruit and stubborn flame,
and branches green may cast a crooked light.

Yet oxymoron asks too clean a break,
as if the grafted life were finished art.
The letters warn of wolves, and also make
the saints confess the war inside the heart.

A Christian ought to be kind; that duty stands.
If kindness never comes, is Christ within that heart?

Christ-Centered Sojourners Who Will Not Bargain with the Age, Faithful to Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords by Debbie Harris

28 Monday Sep 2026

Posted by in Christian Poetry

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To the Reader,

Dear Reader,

This little piece was not written to flatter the age, nor to furnish it with a prettier name for what it already loves. It was written for those who would belong to Christ when belonging costs something.

The world has always had its own liturgies: self as sovereign, appetite as oracle, the present hour as the only court of appeal. Against these the gospel does not negotiate. It calls men strangers in the land they inhabit, pilgrims toward a city they have not built, and servants of a Lord the nations still refuse.

If the lines that follow seem severe, it is because the narrow way is severe. If they seem glad, it is because the One who walked it first is alive. Read them not as a banner against your neighbor, but as a reminder to yourself: when the culture turns from Christ, the church must not turn with it.

May He who is holy keep you holy.

May His word outlast every fashion.

And may you lose the world’s applause, and find in Christ the life that no man can take from you.

—The Poet

We walk as strangers through a borrowed age,
Though streets and markets cry to make us kin;
Men raise their towers on a crumbling stage—
We seek the city God has founded in.

Not of this world, though breathing in its dust,
His kingdom comes without the tyrant’s drum;
He chose the hidden well, the downward thrust,
And made the last the first when He had come.

The age enthrones the self and names it true,
And drinks a sweetness that will leave it dry;
But He who left the glory that He knew
Said, Lose this life, and find the life on high.

Salt of the earth, yet never lost in brine,
A city set that darkness cannot hide;
The cross still cuts across the world’s design,
The Lamb still walks where every Caesar died.

As Noah built while laughter filled the plain,
As Daniel kept the fast they could not break,
We keep a feast the age will not sustain,
And wear the shame that makes the wise ones quake.

When culture turns and sets its face to war
Against the Lord, His word, His holy Name,
We will not bow, nor bargain at the door,
Nor sell His truth to keep the world’s acclaim.

Let All We Are Be Praise by Debbie Harris

19 Saturday Sep 2026

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Dear Reader,

I have seen how great God is in grief.


I have seen Him provide in ways I never thought possible.


I have seen His tender care rest over those near and dear to me.

From that seeing, this poem was born.It did not come from a life untouched by sorrow, but from the quiet places where He met us still—where He held what we could not hold, and gave what we did not know how to ask for. These lines are only a small offering of thanks: that even ordinary hours, even aching hours, may become a hymn of praise.

May they lead you not to the poem, but to Him.— The Poet

Psalm 34:1
I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

Habakkuk 3:17–18
Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.

2 Corinthians 1:3–4
Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

Psalm 147:3
He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.

May every part of us become a song—
the work, the waiting, the word we speak,
the quiet rooms, the crowded street,
the strength we give, the rest we keep.

Not only lifted voices in the night,
but how we walk and how we stay,
how we receive what comes our way,
how we endure, how we obey.

Let joy be music, let sorrow be too,
let ordinary hours rise and ring.
May all we are, in everything,
be hymn and offering unto You.

The Promises Of God, Yea And Amen: Let His Beauty In You Make Them Yearn by Debbie Harris

19 Saturday Sep 2026

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Dear Reader,

Remember what you have received. Hold fast to it, and contend for the faith once delivered to the saints. The promises of God are yea and amen—not distant words on a page, but living fire given to the soul that believes. May that fire of faith be kindled in you again: not a passing warmth, but a steady flame that teaches you to treasure Scripture, to live it, to adore its beauty, and to walk the high places of gratitude and joy. Let it produce a fire in you, that all the world may see the light of Jesus Christ in you. Do not let go of what has been placed in your hands. Keep it. Guard it. Contend for it. Let it light a holy flame.

What follows is an English sonnet: fourteen lines in three quatrains and a closing couplet, rhymed ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

The Poet

For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.
—2 Corinthians 1:20

Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent.”
—Revelation 3:3

Beloved… it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.
—Jude 1:3

Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;)
—Hebrews 10:23

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
—Matthew 5:16

God’s promises are yea and amen still,
firm-spoken, sure, and sealed in Christ the Son;
believe this word, and you shall climb the hill
of gratitude, where joy and praise are one.

Not shadowed vales, nor long and weary plains,
but sunlit ridges, bright with grace bestowed,
where every step His living truth sustains
and gratitude itself becomes the road.

Hold fast the holy fire you have received;
let all the world look on and see its flame,
till Christ in you is known, seen, and believed,
and every promise answers to His name.

Keep what was given on this brief sojourn—
and let His beauty in you make them yearn.

**To God Be The Glory Always And Only!

We Mourn, but Not as Those Who Mourn in Vain by Debbie Harris

17 Thursday Sep 2026

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Thessalonians 4:13–18 (KJV)

13 But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.

14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

Dear Reader,

This sonnet was written after the death of the last parent, when the world feels changed and yet is not empty. The rooms still hold light. There are still people who remember how you began. And heaven is not silent, for those you love are with Christ.

When the last parent dies, something irreplaceable is gone. They remembered your beginning more completely than anyone else on earth. That ache is real. Scripture does not ask you to hide it; even Jesus wept. Name the grief. Then lift your eyes: your help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

You are not without witnesses. There are people who saw you grow—family, old friends, those who stood nearby through the years—and they still remember how you began. That memory is a gift. It means your early life has not vanished. It still lives in other hearts.

And there is a greater comfort still. Those you love are with Christ. The grave is not the end of them, and grief is not the end of you. The same Lord who received them keeps you, keeps the people who remember you, and keeps the promise that love is stronger than death.

If you are walking through that changed world, this was written for you. May it honor what you have lost, bless those who still remember you, and leave you with hope that does not fade.

— The Poet

When both who gave me breath have gone before,
the world itself seems tilted, thin, and strange.
Their room is empty on that quiet floor;
the hallway looks the same, and yet is changed.

No voice now answers “child” down that hall,
no thinning hand to bless or hold me fast.
The ordinary light feels spare as air;
the future stretches, emptied of the past.

Yet death is not the master of this night:
they live in Christ, whose promise cannot fail.
He spoiled the grave and flung the door to light;
and love outlives the flesh that once grew frail.

We mourn, but not as those who mourn in vain;
in Christ they live, and we shall meet again.