Customer Reviews

The Prodigal's Sister (With the Art of Robert Doares)

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I would have to disagree with the previous reviewer's assertion that this book is "bad poetry." Poetry, by definition, communicates experience, and this book communicates experience better than any poem I have read in a while. Piper does a splendid job of communicating the ineffable grace of God as He uses the "weakest" of His people to draw others to Himself. Reading it, for me, was a humbling, awe-inspiring experience because it reminded me of my purpose in life. As for the so-called "bad poetry," poets through the ages have written in rhymed iambic tetrameter. It is the reader's responsibility not to get caught up in poetic form but, rather, to "read from punctuation mark to punctuation mark--not from line to line," (as I tell my students) to see how the form contributes to the poem's meaning.

This book is meant to be listened to. I actually never read the book but have listened to the CD several times. The theme of the CD is that the two sons, both the prodigal and the son remaining at home have left the path of grace, the one to pleasure and the other to law.

Listening to Piper tell his story, I am reminded again that we are saved by grace and that neither our good works nor our sin will affect our standing with the Father. If we are His children by grace, we will remain His children by grace. The concluding "Call" summarizes Piper's message:

And now, 0 Christ, let there be light
So we can see the way aright
Between two dismal forms of death,
And with that light, 0 give us breath
To live again, and bring us back
From pleasures in a foreign shack,
Or from the pride of weary arm,
While working on the Father's farm.

From demon sloth and pleasures raw,
Or demon toil and pride of law.

The pathway home from either place
Is opened by the word of grace.

0 Christ, pursue us till we see
That all of God's bequests are free.

The ticket that we have to show
Is this: that we are glad to go.

If you are His child, listen to this book and rejoice in God's grace.

The road down from the father's farm
Was empty, like an empty arm
That once embraced and then let go,
Or beckoned someone from below.
--the first lines of The Prodigal's Sister

If you think the above is good poetry, then this book is perfect for you. However, be warned that if you read the book, you'll soon become numbed by its intense desire to rhyme and keep the meter at all costs, regardless of whether it makes any sense. (The road was empty like a beckoning arm?) This book will inspire bad poets everywhere that perhaps they, too, can be published by Crossway Books.

The only redeeming feature is the enclosed CD read by the author, who manages to avoid falling into the book's iambic sensibilities. If you buy the book, burn it--but keep the CD.