Movember Poem – “If”

A manly poem for Movember, as we focus on the soul care of men.

“If-”
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! See Less

Be Content…Today

Compassion (https://www.compassion.com/) challenged its blogger community with the following for October:

“This month, we invite you to write about what the Lord has been teaching you lately. Have you been thrown a curveball that seems insurmountable? How were you able to move forward?”

2020 has been a year of changes. Sure, there’s been plenty of sickness, violence, government mandates, drastic changes in how pretty much every industry goes about its business. But for me and my family, it has meant consistent change.

A significant aspect of this change has been that our usual activities have all but stopped. So it’s a change toward the temptation to stagnation. Most of our evenings have turned out to be the same. I have kept my job, though I’m 100% at home, whereas before it was 80% at home. Our older sons, who live at home and work nearby, have kept their brick-and-mortar store jobs because they’re considered “essential.” We home educate, so that stayed much the same for my family.

The difference came with the evening time. We have places that we’d usually go, in order to break up the pattern of staying at home. We like to get out so that we can be around others, have fun out-and-about, give our kids different experiences. But those activities were either halted or reduced in occurrence, and remain that way (though we certainly hope to return to them as things open up).

What do we do now? We celebrate! We have a mini-party as a family every night. We have fun. I suppose one could consider our former outings as celebrations, and so they are. But now we have different celebrations. We hunkered down and focused on enjoying time with each other. We enjoyed time together and the other things before, but this year, we have put a laser focus on enjoying what we already have. We enjoy movies together. We started learning different things. We enjoy story time and time around our outdoor firepit. We enjoy singing hymns, talking to each other more often, eating ice cream (more often! 🙂 ), and playing our instruments with more regularity. We’ve brought so much in-house in order to continue our celebration. We even built a small kid fort in our backyard so that the kids could move and climb more.

We could fear, but we’re not going to. We could mope and criticize, we could tear each other down. We could do all kinds of negative things. But we decided that we’re going to live for today. We’re focusing on what we have, not on what we don’t have. We knew that before, but now we’re living it with much more intention.

The Bible tells us to be content with what we have, to seek first His kingdom, not to worry about tomorrow, to think on things that are excellent and noble. and that God will uphold us.
2020 is a great year to do what God says and hold firm to His promises. When viewed from a humanistic point of view, 2020 is far different than many other years. But from the standpoint of biblical faith, God sees it as every other year – it’s not a surprise to Him, and it’s an opportunity for His people to be molded further into the image of His son, Jesus Christ. 2020 has reminded me that He gives us our daily bread, and, again, He hasn’t failed.