The landscape is littered with ponies never to become horses, lazily grazing til kingdom come. Men are bound to perpetual adolescent thought and behavior; over the last 70 years, the once strong spine of a man has become a pile of sugar. Words like “maturity,” “commitment,” and “sacrifice” are despised in an era of rampant pornography consumption and low carbohydrate diets, as energy drinks get a man through the day. The prophetic edge dissipates as men stare mindlessly into their phones, looking for purpose but only finding dopamine, followed by feelings of loneliness and anxiety.
Men are too scared to dream, and so they quit making art. Men are too indifferent to act, and so they forsake justice. Men are too stubborn to grow, and so they refuse to read. Men are too insecure to ask questions, and so they settle to admire the notion of character in others but do not possess it for themselves. Men are too distracted with trivial things, and so light refuses to come into their eyes; love will never enter their hearts, and life abandons them to merely exist. Men are too proud to listen to their own conscience, much less anyone else, and so they have lost any sense of curiosity. Men are too bored to fly a kite on a sunny day, so they don’t laugh from their bellies; they only laugh from their brains. Men are too embarrassed by their past and so they drag it into today. Men are too self-interested, and so they call in sick to work.
The intellectuals have reinvented the image of a man so many times we no longer know what one is.
The sluggish, intolerant society to which we belong will use the same knife to cut out the tongue of truth in the morning to remove everything of significance by evening.
God forbid me to walk through this grief-stricken world without hope, vision, or meaning. God forbid me to pander to anyone. God, let my yes be yes and no be no. God, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight.
May repentance mark my life. May kindness be quick to fall from my lips. May generosity flow through these hands. May creativity come from this mind. God, make me a man.
“Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
You have said, “Seek my face,” and my heart says to you, “O Lord, your face, I seek.”
The landscape is littered with ponies never to become horses.”
