Exotic, toxic city

After Daniel 1 

An exotic, toxic city,

a city alien to belief

and faith, a city

treasuring gods

of stone, gods of clay,

gods of metal.

 

An exotic, toxic city,

welcoming new citizens

who bend the knee,

rewarding those who

reject their own 

for the dazzling array

of wealth and power.

 

Yet even here, here

in this citadel of destruction,

and false worship, four

decline to eat what the city

offers, the king’s food, 

to show where life and

sustenance are born.

 

And it’s not from 

this exotic, toxic, city.

 

Photograph by Jisun Han via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Culture shock

After Daniel 1

To have everything,

family, wealth, position,

youth, privilege, and

in a moment all is

lost, wiped away,

taken to exile, 

the life before erased.

 

Given a new name,

a pagan name, implying

protection by a god

of clay and stone, 

identity stripped away

to be remade with

a new reality, worldly

cosmopolitan, sophisticated,

empire-oriented, internationalist,

globalist.

 

Four resist, with respect.

Four resist, faithful not

to a nostalgic idea or

a memory of what was

lost, but to what they

knew in their heads and 

what they knew in their hearts

to be true.

 

Photograph by Jose Lopez Franco via Unsplash. Used with permission.