In today’s poetry drop, presented before you are two perspectives. Please share in the comments your thoughts and feelings while reading each one.
Perspectives Look at you. You’re so weak. Filled with pity, envy, and jealousy. Anger, hate, and revenge. You can’t even make it through the day without a drink, puff, or pill. Rushing from here to there. Completely reliant on an absent God to fill your pathetic lives with purpose and meaning, hope and joy. Illusions you tell yourself to make sense of the senseless. You sit there, glued to your screens, judging. Stuffing your face and burning resources to keep yourself comfortable. You isolate into groups, talk endlessly about your feelings while ignoring everyone else. Rationalizing a world outside your control to protect yourself from the weight of reality. You are evil. You are alone. Nothing will ever get better. ⸻ Look at you. Look at what you’ve overcome. Filled with hope, compassion, and patience. Love, joy, and forgiveness. No longer are the majority of you under the thumb of another or whipped for your labor. Fewer of you toil in poverty. No longer are you merely surviving, but living. Your bodies are sometimes weak, but your spirit is strong. Submitting to a God fills you with purpose and meaning. It strengthens you, and bringing you together with others multiplies that strength. Humbling yourself allows you to grow in ways you never thought possible before. Your gratefulness is infectious, helping others pull themselves out of the darkness. You turn resources into what you need to build and serve. Offering grace to others the way your God does for you. You are free, but not without flaws. Your past rides beside you, testing your faith. You serve others who were once like you, filled with resentment and judgment, fear and loathing. You fail, but you keep going. Striving to give back to a God who has given so much to you. You are good. You are worthy of love. The future is bright.
Peace & Love,
Jeff Mayhugh