John Piper - Velvet Steel: The Joy of Being Married to You: Selections from the Poems of John Piper

Other Books by John Piper

Gods Passion for His Glory

The Pleasures of God

Desiring God

The Dangerous Duty of Delight

Future Grace

A Hunger for God

Let the Nations Be Glad!

A Godward Life

Pierced by the Word

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ

The Legacy of Sovereign Joy

The Hidden Smile of God

The Roots of Endurance

The Misery of Job and the Mercyof God

The Innkeeper

The Prodigals Sister

Recovering Biblical Manhoodand Womanhood

Whats the Difference?

The Justification of God

Counted Righteous in Christ

Brothers, We Are NotProfessionals

The Supremacy of God inPreaching

Beyond the Bounds (with Justin Taylor)

Dont Waste Your Life

The Passion of Jesus Christ

Life as a Vapor

A God-Entranced Vision of AllThings (with Justin Taylor)

When I Dont Desire God

Sex and the Supremacy of Christ (with Justin Taylor)

Taste and See

Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Cameto Die

God Is the Gospel

Contending for Our All

What Jesus Demands from theWorld

Amazing Grace in the Life ofWilliam Wilberforce

Battling Unbelief

Suffering and the Sovereignty ofGod (with Justin Taylor)

50 Crucial Questions

When the Darkness Will Not Lift

The Future of Justification

The Supremacy of Christ in aPostmodern World (with Justin Taylor)

Spectacular Sins

Finally Alive: What HappensWhen We Are Born Again

John Calvin and His Passion forthe Majesty of God

Rethinking Retirement

This Momentary Marriage:A Parable of Permanence

Stand: A Call for the Enduranceof the Saints (with Justin Taylor)

Velvet Steel

Copyright 2009 by Desiring God Foundation

Published by Crossway Books
a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers
1300 Crescent Street
Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

First printing, 2009

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN PDF: 978-1-4335-1132-5

ISBN Mobipocket: 978-1-4335-1133-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Piper, John, 1946
Velvet steel : the joy of being married to you : selections from the
poems of John Piper.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4335-1131-8
1. MarriagePoetry. I. Title.
PR3566.I59V45 2009
811'.54dc22

2008048761

LB 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09
15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Nol

CONTENTS

This poetry is an overflow of my affection for my wife of more than forty years. Two of them are exceptionsthey were written by Nol.

Most of them are excerpts from longer poems. The reasons for not including the whole poems is that some are too long and my aim is to give tastes, not mealstastes of one mans affections for his wife.

I put this collection together in the days immediately after writing a book on marriage called This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of
Permanence. This collection of poems completes that book. What seemed to be missing there was the taste of my affections for Nol.

In fact, the point of that book was that covenant keeping, not the affections of being in love, is the main point of marriage. But I also emphasized that tough-minded covenant keeping is the best soil for the long-term flourishing of tender affections. Therefore, it seemed helpful that I give some tastes of what those affections were like over the last forty-two years.

Why poetry? Because poetry helps me intensify and express feelings that cannot be captured sufficiently in ordinary language. In fact, my definition of poetry is: an effort to share a moving experienceby using language that is chosen and structureddifferently from ordinary prose.

Being in love is a very moving experience. It is like a river that over the years has rushing currents, crashing waterfalls, deep peaceful flows, eddies that swirl with scum, windblown backward drifts, surface heavings from boulders beneath, and long-clean stretches of open water.

Not even poetry can render this reality in another form. But some of us must try. It is built into us humans that we must try to express the affections of love in ways that are not like the affections themselves.

We do it with songs, paintings, sculpture, drama, novels, woodwork, flower arrangements, purchased roses, notes left on the dresser, eating out, bed-and-breakfast weekends, repairing the leaky faucet, dressing up, sexual favors, special gifts, surprise phone calls, visiting concerts, movies, museums, gardens, oceans, mountains, and a hundred other ways.

My prayer is that these small tastes of my imperfect affections will fan affections into flamefor God, for your spouse, and, in every fitting way, for all the treasured people in your life.

Marriage is a parable of something greater than itselfthe covenant-keeping relationship between Christ and his church. Christs love for his church was tough enough to keep him on the cross until our purchase was finished.

But it was also tender and warm. Already through the Old Testament prophet, God gave this expression of affection:

How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, O Israel?...
My heart recoils within me;
My compassion grows warm and tender.

(Hosea 11:8)

May God cause such tender shoots of affection to grow in the covenant-keeping soil of your life. May the fullness of Christs love be known and shown in the wholeness of every marriage bond.

John Piper

My love for you, Nol,
will drive me to pursue
with God and you
the one pure love and unity
that Gods own Son
did show in birth and death for us.
As he cast off his glory once
to capture me,
so would I shed my freedom now
to gain
Nol.

Dim shadows of a brighter heart:
These nervous specks of color,
This little world of light;
These minute brilliances.

Yet they can sing!
So sing to her,
You little brilliances,
You timid colors,
You twinkling cosmos.

Sing to her!
Of God and Heaven,
Of life and Hope.

Sing to her!
Of high thoughts,
Of hearts capacities
Beyond your own crystal
realities.

Sing to her!
Of love
Of being loved
With Love more lucid than
yourself.

And purely sing,
My little shadows,
And purely sing
Of me.

Stunning sometimes to ponder
that all my future knowing
and all my future doing