Look to Jesus: A Review of My Light and My Salvation

by Mathew Block

It is a sad truth that too few Lutherans today engage in the creative arts. This is especially true when it comes to written creative arts like poetry and fiction. Most people in the pew would be hard pressed to name more than one English-speaking Lutheran currently working in these fields. That’s a pity since these forms bring unique opportunities for reflection upon the faith.

The publication of a new edition of Rev. Kurt E. Reinhardt’s poetry collection My Light and My Salvation is to be commended, then. A first edition of this work first appeared in 2008. This new edition, published in 2021, substantially expands upon the former, with the addition of more than 40 new poems (and hymn translations) on Christian faith and life.

But these poems do not only re-tell the Word of God to us; they also give us a voice to respond in faith.

While the poetry of Rev. Reinhardt stands in the broader stream of English devotional poetry, many—in fact, most—of the poems in My Light and My Salvation are composed with attention to their potential pairing with music. The poems are, in other words, constructed as hymns. Those with standard metrical forms list the hymn meter at the bottom of the poem; some even give specific tune suggestions.

This is not to say that the poems in My Light and My Salvation must be sung; the reader will find them equally useful in private devotional reading. But a recognition of the hymn-like nature of the work helps us place it in the larger context of the Lutheran hymn tradition.

Like the great hymnwriters who have gone before him, Rev. Reinhardt seeks in his verse to capture Christian faith and life in its many facets—but to do so in ways that are accessible to Christians of various backgrounds. You need not be a poet yourself to understand this work; Rev. Reinhardt writes with an aim to be readily understood.

Rev. Reinhardt presents Jesus to our eyes precisely so that we will come to understand better that Jesus is for us. We indeed look to Jesus, and what do we find? Love. Mercy. Grace.

In this book, we hear the teachings of our faith—the Sacraments, for example, and the promise of eternal life—given new form. We hear the stories of Scripture told in new ways: the Creation; the Incarnation; the Passion; and more. Particularly good among the new poems in this edition is “Tiny Baby, Weak and Small,” which expresses the mystery of the Incarnation in words simple yet profound. The opening verse reads:

Tiny Baby, weak and small
Lying in a shepherd’s stall
Can you be the Lord of all
Tiny Baby, weak and small?

But these poems do not only re-tell the Word of God to us; they also give us a voice to respond in faith. With the poet, we call on God to hear our prayer. The poem “O Jesus, Master, Hear Me,” for example, give us words to cry out in repentance for sin. “O Lord When My Soul is Cast Down” gives us words to cry out when we are sunk in sorrow. The Christian will find here plenty of assistance in praying to God.

And yet, whatever the subject of any given poem, one theme runs through the whole collection: namely, that God would keep our eyes on Jesus. Rev. Reinhardt points us back time and again to Christ, invites us to look to Him, to turn to Him for consolation and forgiveness and hope. We read:

Lord, when faith is weak and ailing
As we sin in all we do,
Take our gaze from all our failing;
Fix our eyes instead on You.

The theme is returned to again and again in Rev. Reinhardt’s poetry. Sometimes the invitation to look to Christ—to look at Christ—is explicit: “Lord, put Your cross before our eyes.” “Lord keep me gazing on Your face.” “Oh, turn our eyes to You.” And where the invitation to look to Christ is not explicit, it remains present implicitly. “Alone He Knew My Greatest Shame,” one of the new poems in this second edition, brings the Passion of Christ before our eyes anew:

Alone He knew my greatest shame
Spread out upon the tree
Laid bare for passions I don’t tame
Forsaken there for me.

Through Rev. Reinhardt’s words, we see Christ laid bare upon the cross. We see Him take on our sins and our shame. We see Him suffer—and all, “for me.”

That “for me” is no accident either. Rev. Reinhardt presents Jesus to our eyes precisely so that we will come to understand better that Jesus is for us. We indeed look to Jesus, and what do we find? Love. Mercy. Grace. As Rev. Reinhardt writes in another poem:

How can I doubt His gracious love,
When hearing what God gave for me?
Must I not know I’ll live above,
When I see His Son on the tree?

This updated collection of Rev. Reinhardt’s verse is a rich devotional resource. Pray the book and make Rev. Reinhardt’s words your own, and you will see Christ on every page—Christ present for you in grace and mercy.

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Mathew Block is editor of The Canadian Lutheran and communications manager for the International Lutheran Council.

The new edition of My Light and My Salvation was published by Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary in St. Catharines, Ontario in early 2021. It is available in print and as an e-book from Lulu.com.

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