Jack Pelham

Put God in front of a man,
In his measureless splendor
And in the vastness of his wisdom
With his higher thoughts and ways—

When someone in your life is twisted and abusive,
And you’re constantly being poked by their thorns—
By thorns they could have
And should have
Removed long ago
Because they know better
And should know better—
And they even bear witness to the wrongness
By their own hating of such thorns in others
And their constant complaining about
Being pricked by them themselves—

Welcome to God’s world!

Many complain about difficulty in finding that sometimes-elusive “Christmas Spirit”. And while that may be an expansive topic with lots of puzzling and even controversial tentacles, my aim in this brief article is to point out one possible cause of this that you might not have considered. It’s the onslaught of euphoric Christmas marketing.

Let me explain.

Some people choose to love,
Even though love sometimes hurts.

Go figure!

What must they see in love
To think it worth the pain,
While others run like crazy
To avoid it?

As in the kitchen, it is possible
To make a mess of one’s own life—
And even of the lives of others.

Yet as in the kitchen, it is possible
To clean it up again.

And just imagine what kind of life one can have,
Who is the sort not to mind the work!

I have a belief,
And I’m quite adamant about it—
Even though a great many
Will remain either unconvinced,
Or certain that its opposite is true.

Who among us could do no better?

Who is so devoted to truth and goodness and love
As never to fall short in his willingness and strength?

Many generally approve of truth as a way of life,
Even if we do falter in it from time to time
And in various ways.

And if some truth is harder than the rest,
And more likely to cause us to stumble,
I suppose I have seen that it is,
More often that not,
Truth about self
That does it.
For that comes hardest of all.

It’s funny, how a person can love the truth
When he doesn’t know all of it yet.

But like a journey in a new land,
It simply cannot be discovered all at once.

And this is our humble lot.
And if we don’t like it,
Whatever shall we do?

Pout about it?

So let us not assume the end
As do the fools,
But let us journey on,
Altering ourselves as needed
To stay the course.

Some make too much of mankind
And his capabilities.
And some make too little.