Poem June 15, 1974 Issue

TESTIMONY

Acts 3:1–8

Rushworth M. Kidder

They were good friends, the men who laid
me daily at the temple gate
called Beautiful to garner alms
from such as spared, among their psalms,
a passing nod and a coin.

Those other two who passed that day—
how could my good friends know what they
saw at a glance: that I, who came
out of my mother's womb a lame
and beggared wraith of a man

had never come from there at all?
Could my friends shear my past away,
who only knew what I (and they)
had long heard taught: a terrible
fierce God and a fleeting man?

Yet we all felt it—the unsurprise,
the calm tremendous love, the eyes
that gathered in such truth as I
had always known, inside, must be
but never had seen in a man.

There was no crash. He said, the same
as I say it to you (and with
such simple meaning!), "In the name
of Jesus Christ of Nazareth
rise up and walk." I'm that man

who walks now, leaping and praising the Love
that—of course—God always was. Could I
ever again sit down in fear
when with good friends I can stand and share
this freedom no coin can buy?

Rushworth M. Kidder

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