In a holding pattern

There's an associate at work who has been looking for a new job for the past 3 months. She's tried a lot of places with no luck so far, and even sent her resume into a place where she's got a good inside contact. She's got great quals and a good history but no dice. Been excited about looking at very new places like New Jersey, and thinking about a totally new life somewhere. Today she learned her mother, 84 years old, has late-stage cancer. Sometimes, there's a reason for that holding pattern that you find yourself in.

When I think about the wider world

When I think about the wider world
And all the people on it
I’m daunted to describe them all
‘Twould be a lengthy sonnet

How different and alike they are
Each bent upon their tasks
Whose dreams are spun and lived within
Beneath their daily masks

Male and female, tall and short,
humans fat and thin,
with endless mix of eye and hair
and pigments of the skin

That outer spectrum shown to us
is nothing to compare
To rainbows arching high and wide
Beneath the skin’s thin layer

But still despite their differences
So similar they fare
a common thread weaves through the lives
and stories that they share

Can we not pause to love them all
great masses thronging wide?
or pause to love a single one
found starving, fallen, tried?

For colors do divide us
into tribes that foster fear
so difficult it makes to touch
our neighbor standing near

Jesus Was a Teacher

Jesus was a teacher
a walkin’ on the earth
rejected in his hometown
a stranger from his birth

God gave him just one task to do
to use his eyes to see
the misery along his path
and surrounding you and me

so Jesus went about his job
with something close to zeal
walking on the dusty trail
and stopping just to heal

he tried to teach us what to do
with beggar’s call to ear -
don’t act as if the call’s not heard
or shirk because of fear

but stop and look and use your heart
to see the person there
and flowing from your love for them
they’d heal from god’s own care

he did this more than just one time
in fact repeated o’er
until the message should have crept
into our conscious more

but still the question spoke aloud
“why trouble yourself so?”
and Jesus’d get real angry then
that man could stoop so low

So Jesus got to praying
and had a thought divine -
if they won’t see each other’s pain
then maybe they’ll see mine

The story is a sad one
full of pain and gore
but finally He did the job
that God had sent him for

So whenever now a cross is seen
it speaks a message clear -
don’t hide from pain or misery
but stop, and see, and hear

Help your brother and your sister
with their troubles old or new
and use your heart to heal their pain
as God commands us all to do