Our Highest Ideal - Poem by Raymond A. Foss

Like stars, he made the allusion, the metaphor
of ideals that are beyond our grasp, eternally
out of our reach, even with spaceships, it would seem
the levels of existence, beyond human ability
A message of understanding the importance of
servanthood, the responsibility to look down
and lift up the last, the least, the lost of the world
to break through the convention of the day, to see
the innate worth, the beauty, the wonder, of the little ones
to treasure children, not merely our own, to welcome them
to give them hope for their future, and ours in the process
to see the central message of his rebuke at the squabble
the banter, the bickering on who was the greatest
when they couldn’t even understand the plain words he
just spoke in a line or two above, words that they could
have pondered on the way, walking as they were, with
Him in their presence, walking ever closer, as he was
to the fulfillment of his destiny, the fated path he journeyed
even in clear language, they were embarrassed, confused
not ready to follow a martyr, even one who would rise
as none before, rise from the tomb, unattainable messages
for this group in the inner circle, how much harder
for those in this time, this millennia hence, without the seeing
to believe, to fathom the import, the significant, of that message
to value the outcast, the forgotten, the lowly, to raise them all up
as he did, in his daily walk, to be servant to be savior and king

September 24, 2006 15:58
Mark 9:30-37