Love of the Cross

Greetings to DoubleRiders!
Short and simple. Yet powerful . The message about thy god is conveyed in a beautiful manner. Loved it.
Keep up the good work.
#poetryrocks.

A short and sweet poem - I love seeing religious poetry around!

I do have a few critiques:

Form
I do think some of the capitalizations were unnecessary - for instance "Our" and "Cross", even the capitalization of "Peace, Hope, Faith, and Love," is a bit unnecessary.


Message
The generic message is a great one - here is the gospel plain and true that Christ died for the forgiveness of sins - and I think that comes across in the poem.

However, the theology of it is a bit odd for me. I don't think most people would actually argue that all of us achieve Peace and Hope in this world - in fact Jesus says the opposite - that the peace he brings is not possible in this world and will only be fully here in the world to come (Revelations) (Math 10:34). Now it's absolutely okay to have a poem that has your own personal theological convictions in it, I only bring up this issue because some other readers might find the claim unfounded as well, which might make them lose the rest of your poem's meaning.

It also might be nice to have more gender-inclusive language like using "humankind" rather than "mankind" - so that the poem can be more accessible for women and men readers rather than just one or the other.

Word Choice and Rhyming
I thought that the word choice was just fine for this poem, and it's alright to use a bit more formal language when talking about a formal subject. The rhyming was pretty basic, but all of the rhymes did seem to work.

As far as flow, line 4 ended up being a bit long, and then line 5 was one of the shortest by syllables - so you might want to see what you can do to even these out a bit to improve the overall flow.

Other Suggestions
A last suggestion is that you could also have a bit more specificity with what Christ's death meant for the speaker personally. There are plenty of poems and songs that give the exact same message that this poem gives, in almost the same wording and language. Lending specificity to the message makes it new, but it also gives it authority - like a testimony. There's not even any need necessarily to make it personal per se but it would nice to make it a bit more specific so that the poem has a more direct impact.

Here's an article I wrote on the subject if you want to hear more about why specificity is so important in poetry: Specificity in Poetry.

Overall it's a nice poem, but there are a few ways that I think it could be improved.

Let me know if you had any questions about my review, and I hope to see more of your poetry in the future!

~alliyah

It can be really hard to write reviews of religious material because everyone has different beliefs, so I hope I can do this justice.
I like the peace, hope, faith, and love. This is what Jesus is. He promised peace and love, he was love and hope, and he inspired faith and love in everyone. He still does. But you might want to think a little bit about the "hidden deep within" part, because if we can all feel the Father's love through Jesus, it isn't really hidden, or at least not hidden too deep, is it? I do want to address some things that are less religious based and more just poetic. You used the word "Thee" in the first line. It gives that line a nice ring and it's kind of fitting to use old biblical era language, but if you do, you should be consistent. "Thee" means you, essentially. But you use the word you and your multiple times in the rest of the poem. I would suggest that you just change the yous to "thou" or "thee" and the your to "thy", but you could also just change thee to you.

This is a great poem. I really enjoyed it! I hope I was able to help.

Hello DoubleRiders, (late) welcome to YWS!

Since your poem is short, my review will be too.

As always, feel free to ignore any comments or suggestions I make should you find them unhelpful.


I am always happy to see love for the Lord expressed through any medium, but especially writing

Suggestions

You started with "thee" being used, which is an archaic word used in place of "you" in some of it's usages. You used it correctly and everything, but I feel like it would have been interesting to see you use these archaic word choices throughout. Simply my thoughts on that.

Conclusion

Short and sweet, with an important message that our Messiah shed his blood so that we may be saved through him and him alone. I always enjoy reading praise poetry/stories/etc.

I look forward to reading more of your work

Keep Writing,

-Katja

Praised be the Lord, for He is merciful and bestows His eternal grace upon us.

Just thought I'd share some words of worship. Thanks for sharing.