60 Poems Lost

In a recent prisoner exchange, Afghanistan surrendered an American Christian for an Afghani convicted of selling drugs and terrorizing. 

The Christian had spent the past two years in jail in Afghanistan even though he had all the proper documentation, had initially been welcomed by governing authorities, and was in the country to help entrepreneurs start small businesses. 

During that time, he was separated from his wife and family. He was only allowed out of doors for twenty minutes once a month until the end of his captivity, when he was allowed outside twice a day. 

While in jail, he requested writing materials and wrote the concepts for three books. He also wrote sixty poems. 

When he was released, his captors kept his manuscripts.

When I first read this news story, I felt compassion for the prisoner as an American, as a Christian, as a wife, as a human- but when I read this last part of the story, I felt compassion for him as a writer.

To lose one’s manuscripts would be devastating. 

I’m sure he still has the ideas in his head. The book concepts can be reconstructed. But he will never remember all sixty of his poems. The particular word order, the emotion that drove him to compose the poem, the nuances of figurative language are all gone.

They will never be published on the Rabbit Room Poetry Substack channel (a popular outlet for Christian art and writing). They will never be published by Square Halo, Christian Focus Publications, or any other Christian press. 

They have been crucified with Christ. 

At first, I grieved for his poems. Then, I wondered, did he write them in English? Or did he write them in the Afghan language? 

I don’t have an answer for that, but I imagined his captors, reading his poems, whether right from the page or through Google Translate. 

Perhaps they were looking for incriminating evidence against him or America. Maybe they were looking for information about his wealth or blackmail material. Instead, what did they find in those sixty lost poems?

God published this captive’s poetry on a press more exalted than any traditional publisher possesses. 

If God’s Word promises that none of His children’s tears are ever wasted, but instead kept (and treasured) in His bottle, then none of this prisoner’s poems went to waste either.

What if he wrote about the Providence and Provision of God? Did his poems convey light in dark places? Did his metaphors communicate hope as an anchor for the soul?

I’m sure the captors were surprised by what they found in their prisoner’s poems. My prayer is that they found Jesus there.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.”

The prisoner’s sixty poems may have been crucified with Christ, but may they also be resurrected as a fragrant offering to Him who is the Author of our Faith, the One who was also called a Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief.