About It
I am helpless
Though God
Is more eloquent
Just saying
I love you
And there is nothing
You can do
About it
This poem is a tribute to human helplessness and the redeeming love of God which we have no control over. Being helpless is a universal human experience. While this can be frustrating, helplessness is a vulnerability that can open us up to experiencing God. This poem juxtaposes the typical experience of human helplessness with the simple and hopeful reality that God’s love for us has a unconditionality; we are helpless against it; we can’t do anything to change it! The “it” in the title and at the end of the poem is another of my intentionally ambiguous pronoun which refers to both helplessness and God’s love, the mutually reinforcing core themes of this poem. The message of hope and grace is that not everything that we are helpless over is a threat to us — quite the opposite. Life itself was unbid by us, yet we partake of it. We are awash in a sea of grace. This doesn’t obviate the fact that we are also surrounded by inhumane, even hostile forces. Nonetheless, such grace, and a disciplined awareness of such grace, can offer a powerful counterbalance to the forces of evil in the world. Reflecting such grace into a difficult world can really mess with the minds (and hearts) of your fauxs. So have some fun with it!
