The Lions Den
I awaited the hour of Your presence to come.
I spent my energy in patient silence waiting for Your voice.
I fell lost for thought and direction.
My mind flooded aimlessly into the endless corridors.
I sunk down into a torpor because I could not feel you near.
The years’ drug on like sluggish roaming cattle.
I would wake up and face the day’s battle as if being led by a puppeteer.
Debilitated and worn to a smallish nub, I miraculously got through each day.
Others would speed along, winding noises in my ears.
They whooped and hollered, drunken with life’s allusions.
It was a clanging symphony inside my head.
The dread of the daily routine made me sick.
I learned to be blind and deaf so that I could endure the living.
Still yet, that something in me carried me through that wasteland.
I clung hopefully to each new day, awaiting your voice.
Frailly, I muddled through the raging quiet to its end.
Hopeful for a season of rest, I smote with grandeur.
I breathed in and breathed out.
Closing my eyes, I laughed aloud with relief.
I was a soldier leaving his foxhole at the end of war.
I stepped forward through the open door.
A door of unknown lands, of the likes no man has seen.
Still sure this door awaited rest, I moved anxiously forward.
I swallowed the pill, no questions asked and expecting euphoric pain relief.
As I lifted my eyes, which seemed to take a thousand years, I smelled an awful odor.
It permeated the room like fresh defecation.
The humid air velvetly touched my body, caressing my skin and coaxing me inward.
With sight in full rebound, I gazed upon the unknown lands; my long awaited direction.
My heart sank and my stomach grew ill as I stood surrounded by lions.
They were hungry, angry, and aroused with defense.
Words flooded my brains.
So much so that I could not speak.
I fell silent, but my spirit uttered only one phrase.
“Into the den, into my destiny.”
Copyright © Joshua Harris | Year Posted 2018
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