Sad times

Sooner or later you bang your head

against the inevitable obstacle

that turns your life into a cross.

You become sick.

You have an accident.

Your loved-one dies.

Your career is a failure.

You are deceived, abandoned by your husband or wife.

Things go against you.

People pull you down.

You are humiliated, ruined.

You can’t go any more.

You grow old.

This obstacle can be any shape or size.

It doesn’t take any notice of your degrees,

Your standing, your name, your reputation,

the size of your wallet, your relationships

or your success with people.

You seem lucky.

Everything is going well…

Then suddenly that dark could looms up.

It can hurt you so badly, that,

Disillusioned, disheartened and battered,

you’d rather be dead.

This tragedy, this obstacle,

is a reality in every person’s life.

But fewer  and fewer people can cope with it.

They can’t accept it any more and become over-anxious.

Many go down under the stain.

Doctors and psychiatrists are overburdened.

You have no choice.

Either you bear your cross

or it will crush you.

But you cannot carry your cross,

Unless you learn to understand its function.

The cross brings you back to truth,

to the reality of your vulnerability

-your exact human size, your insignificance,

your poverty, your feebleness.

The cross can free you from your material things,

Which threaten to drown you.

You can cut free from your mediocrity.

The cross is like an aerial,

which can pick up a message from God.

It won’t take away your pain,

but it will take away the senselessness,

the purposelessness of it all.

You can feel human again

and perhaps, feel and see everything clearly,

through eyes that have wept.