Poetry: John’s tormentative lament had all but destroyed his life.
By emptychair
@innertalks (23745)
Australia
April 30, 2018 9:38pm CST
John was living his living death, so painfully still alive.
He felt wrung out by life, treating him so disdainfully.
The harrowing heckling had destroyed who he was.
John had had enough. He wanted God to explain his pain!!
Life toyed with John, even as it teased him, troubling to distress.
John felt like that God had pulled life dead over his head, spread.
Only while asleep did John ever come into some form of new life.
He dreamed he was mighty, powerful, flying blindly, but not dead, yet.
John’s problem wasn’t really just all up in his head, being misread.
He lay dead in his bed, but he was alive, instead, he was full of lead.
It was God’s love that lead him to himself, over and over again, to befriend,
yet John ignored this love, as life scared him to death, once again, to defend.
There is never a problem big enough to remove all of your hope.
Life's rope may sit firmly tight, around your neck, but you'll cope,
if, you do not elope with your mind's fear, but stay with your heart.
Love has its own way to answer you, of which you are but its stoep.
Photo Credit:
The photo used here was freely sourced from the free media site: pixabay.com.
Even if life chops you down, maybe it has something else that it has planned for your life instead!!
Perhaps a table, a chair, a bookcase, for someone else to enjoy??
12 people like this
9 responses
@kobesbuddy (78833)
• East Tawas, Michigan
2 May 18
The Lord never gives a person more than they can handle. We grow closer to God, through all of our earthly experiences.
4 people like this
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
2 May 18
Yes, I believe we can grow closer to God through our Earthly experiences too, and having the right attitude, and maintaining our hope, helps us to see this great truth better too.
Everything is moving us closer to God, and growing our understanding and ability to love him more, if we allow it to do so. The free will choice to do this is still largely up to us, I think too.
2 people like this
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
2 May 18
@kobesbuddy I wonder if this idea of personal choice goes right down the wire to our very birth though.
Some New Age thinkers think that we make such a choice to be born with certain parents etc, into a certain environment too, for example.
I agree when we have reached a certain maturity of mind, the choice must be ours alone to make, but at an early age, like that, I am not sure if our responsibility of choice goes that far down to our very birth though, and yet the Christian Bible tells us that God knew us before we were born, so if this be true, maybe we did have some type of an input into our coming birth too.
2 people like this
@kobesbuddy (78833)
• East Tawas, Michigan
2 May 18
@innertalks Everything in our life, is a personal choice. To draw closer to the Lord, or keep him at a distance. To obey his holy commandments, or please our sinful, worldly nature. Attitudes are the 'gold nugget' that earns us favor with God. As we allow him to change our hearts, those attitudes change and we become more in the image of his only begotten son, the Lord Jesus Christ. His nature is always loving, pure, and kind.
2 people like this
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
1 May 18
Thank you. I believe that too. God only gives you what he knows that you can handle and so grow from.
5 people like this
@GardenGerty (169590)
• United States
2 May 18
Even WHEN life chops you down, because it will but I do agree there is beauty in serving others.
4 people like this
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
2 May 18
Yes, if life chops us down, there is still an opportunity to make the best of it somehow else, and serving others is indeed a beautiful thing to do.
1 person likes this
@lookatdesktop (27156)
• Dallas, Texas
2 May 18
It sounds like you're talking about my brother.
3 people like this
@lookatdesktop (27156)
• Dallas, Texas
2 May 18
@innertalks , Well John is my older brother's name. And his situation is more or less comparable to your poem and it was a good one, by the way. 
2 people like this
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
2 May 18
@lookatdesktop Thanks, I must be a bit like him then.
My whole problem is I fight my heart with my mind, and with its thinking.
It takes great courage to live from your heart, and I am mostly sadly lacking in that area.
I am a weak person, who wants so much to be a strong person.
I like to write as if I am that strong person that I would like to be, and if I could follow my own answers, I would not be so much like John, or your brother too.
2 people like this
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
2 May 18
Yes, it could be so!!.
I usually write about my own self though, but pick a pseudonym name like this to do so.
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
1 May 18
Thanks, the poem was a bit of a downer, without that last verse, adding hope to the mix.
I was feeling down when I started it, but towards the end, the last verse proved to me once again that indeed there is still hope even in the worst of situations.
2 people like this
@Shiva49 (28402)
• Singapore
3 May 18
@innertalks Yes, everything is recycled and nothing is really wasted. Your closing part is poignant:
"Even if life chops you down, maybe it has something else that it has planned for your life instead!!
Perhaps a table, a chair, a bookcase, for someone else to enjoy??"
"It takes all kinds to make a world" so we exist in one form or another! siva
1 person likes this
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
3 May 18
@Shiva49 Thanks siva. Yes, I believe that we will always exist in one form or another, and this is why it is best to make the best of the form that we currently find ourselves in here right now too.
No good always looking for something better in the future, yes live your life as it is right now.
Everything only ever progresses and builds on this now, as it is now anyway. Try to better the now, now, and a better future is assured.
1 person likes this
@mlgen1037 (29882)
• Manila, Philippines
2 May 18
That was a heartfelt poem, Steve. I think in this life, everything has a purpose. We just have to trust God and never question. It will make us understand why there thinga happening to us that are beyong comprehensible. Faith and hope matter.
2 people like this
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
2 May 18
Thanks, Louise.
Yes, faith and hope matter, and we need to trust in ourselves, in life, and in God too.
I have trouble living in my body as me, and yet I also feel that I know it all through my soul connected to God, where is my disconnect here then?
When God created us humans here, he needed to make a certain dispositionary position in us, to disconnect us from the soul part of us, in order for us to think that we mattered more, and so then, we would put effort into our living, instead of our always swaying to our soul or higher selves view of things, instead.
Practical living is always more important than theoretical knowledge of that living, and is the point of it all.
We need to then listen to all input, but make our living of our life here our own, by deciding from our self to never follow anything else, blindly so.
We should allow input then from God, from our higher selves, and from other people living here too, but the final choice of our way of living here, must be ours alone, and not shovelled out to anything else, but us.
2 people like this
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
2 May 18
@mlgen1037 I think the right way is tenanted in us as our conscience.
I was reading that because of civilisation, both the Athiest and the believer would both concur with the basic rightness of living by such a code as the Ten Commandments are.
Even a civilised atheist would follow the basic ideas of these, about not killing, lying, stealing and honouring our parents, for example.
All of us are really better able to discern these things now, because of the level that we are all at now.
I believe that our collective consciousness level has grown over time, and this results in our moving closer (in many ways) to our conscience, our higher self, and God, I think too.
2 people like this
@mlgen1037 (29882)
• Manila, Philippines
2 May 18
@innertalks That is beautiful, Steve. Very well put. With all the theories from "intellectual" people, we have become chaotic and all the more complicated, when in fact it shouldnt be. We have become to reliant on others that deciding for ourselves have become a burden. But with proper discernment, I believe we will be able to choose what is right for us, and what is not.
2 people like this
@LeaPea2417 (40061)
• Toccoa, Georgia
2 May 18
God is with you amidst the pains of life.
2 people like this
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
2 May 18
Yes, thanks. It can be hard to see that at times.
If this is true, and God is with us in our pain, what causes us this pain anyway, though?
I would say that mostly the pain of life is self-caused, and brought about largely by ignorance of its laws.
This would also mean though, I think, that even when we know these laws, there is still pain, because with a human body to contend with here, perhaps there will always be pain in life, but we will understand its place better then, and see God in that pain better then too.
2 people like this
@akalinus (44366)
• United States
3 May 18
@innertalks I know but when you feel down, it is hard to be positive and sunshiney.
2 people like this
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
3 May 18
@akalinus Yes, you usually feel like doing nothing, as everything is an effort to do. That's where having a hobby or an interest can help. That's when I start to write poetry, as I like to put how I am feeling into words.
2 people like this
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
3 May 18
Thanks. If we are feeling down, it is good to add back a few good thoughts, such as this, as it does seem to pick us up, I think.
2 people like this
@oahuwriter (26773)
• United States
3 May 18
You know what, God is always there for everyone, so poor John, could pray and get comfort, peace or help. Protection too if John wanted to be protected from his tormentors. Thus, when John got what he needed he wouldn't be so unhappy. What a nice life John could have, now, when he prayed.
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
4 May 18
Yes, it is good to pray in times of difficulty.
Sometimes, when we get down, our doubts about God raise up though. It is at these very times, though, that we should make an extra effort to pray to God, I think.
Writing a poem, in its way, is also like praying, that is, if we allow the inspiration for our writing to come to us, inspired in us by God, and his love, in our hearts.
2 people like this
@innertalks (23745)
• Australia
4 May 18
@oahuwriter Yes, if we can try to see God's hand working in our lives at all times, that is a great way to live our lives.
2 people like this
