For God so loved the world.
The World.
All of us.
Even the boy who says,
“I’m tired of hearing that I have potential.
I want to hear something else.”
He says this, because, I think,
to him,
“potential” sounds like a defeated
failure
an inability to apply oneself.
A “too bad.”
An “oh well.”
An afterthought from a host
of people who see a waste
of that potential
and don’t see the fourteen-year-old
under the hood.
But, yet-
oh, glorious words!
God so loved the world,
and by the world,
God meant every person,
the prostitute without papers
just as much
as the preacher behind the pulpit.
God so loved the world,
so God lit the world,
a light, a wind,
warmth
to fill the dark places
the hiding spots
the hoods
the hearts brittle
by necessity.
What can I do for
the boy,
an unexpected gift,
except silently vow to never
use the word potential ever again,
and to smile,
to believe in,
to start acting according to the way
God tells his story.
And to start believing the narrative
the way God tells it.
What can I do but hope?
And then-
an epiphany?
Maybe loving our world,
maybe lighting our darkness
looks just like that-
hope.
