Endure

What becomes of us?
Circling our ambitions
in tentative pigeon steps,

not awaiting permission

but opportunity,

which some take as the same thing.

Anticipation takes our breath

until we are light-headed,

spinning, it repeats and repeats.

I wish this circle

was a spiral,

but I recognise my tracks,

our tracks

in the flattened grass

and compressed dirt.

Our internal voices

circle our potential

like hungry vultures,

waiting to pick the bones

of what might have been,

in the approval of regret.

A Poem written as an encouragement for endurance. It's difficult to start new initiatives, to build something sustainable that is in the image of something greater than yourself, to live a Christlike life. Laying foundations feels like walking in circles. But these foundations are important and it is right that it takes time! For, to build without foundations is to build in ignorance, a fatalistic and pointless exercise in egotistical squandering. 

In Romans 5, Paul wrote '... we also boast in our sufferings,knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, that has been given to us.'

If we choose to endure the suffering and difficulty we meet trying to do the will of God, he will forge in us a character of endurance and hope in him. Keep the faith. Run the race. Fight the good fight. Love like he loves.