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A cold coming we had of it

Updated: Nov 19, 2021



“A cold coming we had of it”?

Well actually

The cold was the least of it.

The heat was much worse:

Cold you can combat,

But searing heat….

There is no escape from that.


“Just the worst time of the year

For a journey”?

Well what good time was there

Leaving wives and familiarity

Power and prestige

On an enigmatic quest

With an uncertain end.


“With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly”?

Actually the voice between my ears

Was far more troublesome:

Incessantly whispering subterfuge

To my fragile hope

That this search was worthwhile.


And those “three trees on the low sky”?

How that memory came back to me years later

When my son, back from business in Judea,

Told me a tale

of a crucified Messiah

Praying forgiveness on his torturers

And my old bones shivered.


“no longer at ease here,

in the old Dispensation”?

well something changed that day, yes.

The quest, which seemed concluded

I realised on that long journey home

Had only just began:

That somehow I was still waiting.


It was not “another death”

I sought, but Life

Which came at last one day

With a friend’s news

Of a new start he had found

In that same Jerusalem

We had once so fruitlessly

– and disastrously – visited;

And at last I knew

The search began so long ago

Was finally completed.


Poem by Jeannie Kendall, reproduced with permission


Note: I have taken liberties here quoting from TS Eliot’s famous poem about the Magi, for a bit of fun. See Poetry X for his far superior poetry. Re the ending

according to Acts 2:9 there were Persians, Parthians and Medes among the very first new Christian converts at Pentecost. Since then there has been a continuous presence of Christians in Iran, though it remains a minority faith there.

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