A Hope Like No Other by Daniel Blumentritt

I probably don’t look like it to you,

but I’m only an infant

I do a good job of hiding it behind the experience gained through trial and terror, but this countenance often serves nothing but to conceal
Society likes it better that way, and it’s a simple thing to deceive all but the most dedicated observers with a veil of fabricated serenity

Because like a baby bawling out for food, my soul is selfishly screaming “Love me, accept me, trust me, befriend me.”
But what if my eyes are turned so far inward towards my my heart that I don’t notice all around me – in fact it surrounds me – chains and pains and troubles that far exceed my own?

Well I’m sorry, but my heart is hungry. Wait your turn to matter
But to touch and cherish isn’t so preposterous a task as one might think, because the smallest gestures last the longest while
Every glance into my eyes is desert from the King’s table
Every choice to trust me is a dozen dazzling meals

And each hug, thousands of delicious berries
And so, infant that I am, I begin my quest: forward, forward, forward no matter the cost!
My stomach demands to be satisfied and I shall have what I seek

It’s so ludicrous, isn’t it, when I haven’t lived and hungered by any choice of my own?
Thin and starving, skin-and-boney
My life is only what you’ve loaned me

Now I’m only a child

Sitting in a one-room schoolhouse
My mind drifts on the breeze of inventions only I can appreciate while vague impressions of something called “self-sacrifice” attempts to chase the wind

The voice of the professor interrupts my dancing imagination as I abruptly become reacquainted with reality
Love my neighbor as myself? But I’m just a kid wanting to have fun, and besides, I’m still hungry
And we all know that it aches in a way materialism can’t understand for our restless spirits to return to the ark with no place to land, no olive branch in hand

And we all think we know the plans we have for us, to meet our own needs and avoiding letting others harm us, to make ourselves prosper, and give ourselves hope and a future – ha!
We might as well ask the sun and moon to reschedule themselves for us
Personal individualistic convenience is not what they were made for, and neither were we

And the more this slowly sinks into my soul’s thick skull the more it becomes apparent why the ancients and moderns alike can’t stop writing and singing about love
If I can find another wanderer, together we can lend each other strength and huddle together for warmth in this blizzard known as solitude

Together we’ll press onward, onward, onward in spite of the frost!
But wait, my imagination has run away again and taken me with it
If I could convince it to return me back to myself I’d realize that a child like me hasn’t the faintest clue of how to lay down my life for another

So my idealistic journey halts at this chasm
I was already walking slowly
Now I’m stuck, humbled and lowly

Now I’m only a boy

Standing on the edge of a limb
Waiting for the hacksaw in your hand to initiate my plummet to doom
This love I long for is a risky business and I’ve broken bones I didn’t even know I had
And now I neither have the heart to stay nor sense enough to back away

It’s time for this turtle to pull back into his seashell, and if she sells me by the seashore I suppose I’ll drown
Numerous notable authors say that even drowning in the attempt to swim aboard is a vastly superior experience to sitting on the shore throwing rocks at the waves

But one thing you need to know about me is that I really like staying alive
- A voice thunders melodically from heaven!
What is this God? Some sort of sick joke? Lose my life to find it? Are you really saying I’m supposed to rejoice every time another piece of me dies?

But then, you rejoiced when you died, didn’t you? Just to be with us?
What if I were to disregard myself like you did and slingshot all my neediness back a millenium and a millenium again, to die with you?
What if I let you lead me deeper, deeper, deeper? I’ll never get lost!

But I’ll lose everything that I should never have dared to gain
Maybe then you could teach me how to be worthy of someone who’s been longing for a lifetime to be worthy of someone who’s been longing for a lifetime to be worthy of her

But to find someone like this could take eternity
In the meantime I’m still lonely
Help me live like you have shown me

I’m only a man

Nothing more, nothing less.
I dodge cynical darts day and night
To find someone like this could take eternity, so it’s a good thing God already lived that long
Someday I’ll meet you and in the blink of an eye my life will be changed forever; more rapid than a pause, something like scales will fall from my eyes and I’ll see

Someday I’ll find that I can desire all the love I want and never be ashamed of it because it’s only in the wanting for myself than I’ve been led to delve deeper into the discovery that I only quench my thirst by giving away every last drop
Someday it’ll fall to me to carry you when you’re hurt and hold you when you’re grieving
Someday I’ll be granted the privilege of enduring trial after trial for the joy of seeing the joy in your eyes

Someday I’ll trust you with all that I am and keep you close not so that I can stop wondering if I’m loved, but because you deserve to be cherished more than all the riches of the earth
Someday we’ll live the adventure always, always, always at any great cost
Someday I’ll realize I’m not the only one of us who’s longed for this since I was young

How long have you waited for me?

Could you be my One and Only?

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