It’s Hard To Forget
“He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall”
Psalms 40:29,30
A couple of years ago an engineer received a call from a friend who happened to be a welder. It turned out the welder had put together a highly unusual bike and wondered if his friend would be interested in trying it. The thing that allocated this bike apart as unusual was the way it steered. Essentially the bicycle steered backwards. For example, if the handlebars were turned to the left the bike would automatically veer to the right. They called it the backwards bike.
However, the engineer imagined riding the bike would be fairly easy. Almost as effortless as riding a normal bike would be. But when the over-confident engineer attempted to ride the bike, he found it much harder than he had expected. One of the main reasons that he found riding the backwards bike so hard was the fact that, when he was young, the engineer had learned how to ride a normal bike. After years and years of riding a normal bike he was so used to it that it made the backwards bike seem nearly impossible to ride. The engineer finally mastered
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riding the backwards bicycle, but it took much longer than he had ever anticipated. This is a miniature picture of what often happens in our day-to-day lives. We often grow up believing something or we learn how accomplish something a specific way and it becomes ingrained in our brains. We must exert large amounts of effort in able to lose what we had first entrenched in our brains. Although this can be an unwholesome thing at times it doesn’t mean that it is always this detrimental for us. For example, when I was younger, my parents would read Bible stories to my siblings and me every night. After years of listening to the stories my siblings and I essentially had them memorized; we could recall them whenever we felt the need. Even to this day I can remember the majority of the stories that were read to us during our younger childhood years. This undoubtedly shows that once we spend time learning something it is extremely difficult to forget. Only with extreme dedication are we able to learn the opposite. Despite the fact that it took the engineer approximately eight months to become comfortable riding the bike backwards, it only took him a miraculous fifteen minutes to re-learn how to ride a normal bike. Even though this may seem unfeasible, this is often what happens when we fall into a certain sin for a large period of time. When we try to conquer that sin, but we often find ourselves spending much more time and effort than we had. And we may think we have it under control, we are, in reality, just a fraction away from falling. There are innumerable sins in our lives! This knowledge gives me quite get a feeling of hopelessness. We are completely incapable of controlling our own lives. Notwithstanding that fact that this may create a feeling of hopelessness, we must not despair owing to the fact that we have a Creator who cares for us and longs to live with us in Heaven.
We can gain hope in the verse “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak” Psalms 40:29. Another verse that can encourage us is Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Even though we may feel quite little and powerless, all we must do is ask Christ for help and we will be able to “do all things through Christ”. This includes overcoming sin that we as humans don’t have the power to overcome by ourselves. I don’t know about you, but this makes me extremely thankful for our God who cares for us and is willing to use His strength to save
us.
As depicted in the poem "Kicking the Habit", The role of the English language in the life of the writer, Lawson Fusao Inada, is heavily inherent. As articulated between the lines 4 and 9, English is not just solely a linguistic device to the author, but heightened to a point where he considers it rather as a paradigm or state of mind. To the author, English is the most commonly trodden path when it comes to being human, it represents conformity, mutual assurance and understanding within the population. Something of which he admits to doing before pulling off the highway road.
Kim Addonizio’s “First Poem for You” portrays a speaker who contemplates the state of their romantic relationship though reflections of their partner’s tattoos. Addressing their partner, the speaker ambivalence towards the merits of the relationship, the speaker unhappily remains with their partner. Through the usage of contrasting visual and kinesthetic imagery, the speaker revels the reasons of their inability to embrace the relationship and showcases the extent of their paralysis. Exploring this theme, the poem discusses how inner conflicts can be powerful paralyzers.
In the world of teenagers everything seems to come and pass by so quickly. For instance the beginning of senior year. In Spite of being happy and excited were also generally nervous and anxious to see what our future holds. As senior year comes to an end, It then becomes as temporary as the summer sun but also the boundary of our life before we enter adulthood. Even then our future is still undefined.
In the poem Reunion by Carolyn Forché, she does an excellent job of including line breaks to make a meaningful impact. I noticed that the poet’s use of “half-commas” as referenced in the book helps show the reader where there’s an emphasis. For example, in the poem stanza, “later, the tongues swishing in my dress, some yours, some left by other men.” The punctuation here aids in presenting the words in an exciting way as “some left by other men” was not what I expected after the pause.
In “Useless Boys” the writer, Barry Dempster, creates a strong feeling of disappointment and shame in himself and society as he looks back on his youth to when him and a friend made a promise to each other to “not be like their fathers”. Dempster expresses a sort of disgust for the capitalist society his world seems to be built around, a life where even if you’re doing something you initially enjoyed you end up feeling trapped in it. The poem is a reflective piece, where he thinks back on how he truly believed he would end up happy if he chose a different path than that of his parents. The author uses simple diction and syntax, but it’s evident that each idea has a much deeper meaning, which assisted in setting a reflective/introspective mood.
In the slam poem, “To this day” by Shane Koyczan he writes a slam poem about kids who get bullied and how words actually can hurt people. Towards the end of the video, he starts portraying motivation and not kids being bullied, at this part, it shows a coffin chained up and pulled into the ground, but a fist triumphantly shoots out of the ground holding a broken chain and a banner spiraling around it saying, “THEY WERE WRONG”. Shane states, “because how can you hold your ground if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it you have to believe that they were wrong” (Koyczan). This quote is giving you motivation, and inspiration to rise up above all the hate and all the bullies and tell them they were wrong. Because if you don’t
Patricia Young’s poem Boys is a representation of implied heteronormacy in society. Young uses tropes and schemes such as allusion, metaphors and irony to convey the ways in which heterosexuality is pushed onto children from a young age. Poetry such as Boys is a common and effective medium to draw attention to the way society produces heteronormativity through gendered discourses that are typically used to understand sex. Boys does an excellent job at drawing its readers to the conclusion that it is an ironic poem trying to emphasize the over-excessive ways in which we express heterosexuality in daily life.
Forgetfulness can be seen in many different lights; it can be seen a bad thing, or a good thing. In the poem “Forgetfulness” by Hart Crane, the speaker utilizes similes and metaphors to convey ideas about forgetfulness in order to develop the theme; in the poem by Billy Collins with the same name, the speaker utilizes personification and irony to convey ideas about forgetfulness to develop the theme.
...ed. The psalmist said, “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.” The psalmist remains caught between despair and hope.
"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal [but] which the reader recognizes as his own." (Salvatore Quasimodo). There is something about the human spirit that causes us to rejoice in shared experience. We can connect on a deep level with our fellow man when we believe that somehow someone else understands us as they relate their own joys and hardships; and perhaps nowhere better is this relationship expressed than in that of the poet and his reader. For the current assignment I had the privilege (and challenge) of writing an imitation of William Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 87". This poem touched a place in my heart because I have actually given this sonnet to someone before as it then communicated my thoughts and feelings far better than I could. For this reason, Sonnet 87 was an easy choice for this project, although not quite so easy an undertaking as I endeavored to match Shakespeare’s structure and bring out his themes through similar word choice.
The Theme of Loss in Poetry Provide a sample of poetry from a range of authors, each of whom portrays a different character. the theme of loss in some way. Anthology Introduction The object of this collection is to provide a sample of poetry from a range of authors, each of whom portray the theme of ‘loss’ in some way. The ‘Loss’ has been a recurring theme in literature for centuries, from.
Did I Miss Anything? is a poem written by a Canadian poet and academic Tom Wayman. Being a teacher, he creates a piece of literature, where he considers the answers given by a teacher on one and the same question asked by a student, who frequently misses a class. So, there are two speakers present in it – a teacher and a student. The first one is fully presented in the poem and the second one exists only in the title of it. The speakers immediately place the reader in the appropriate setting, where the actions of a poem take place – a regular classroom. Moreover, the speakers unfolds the main theme of the poem – a hardship of being a teacher, the importance of education and laziness, indifference and careless attitudes of a student towards studying.
‘The Falling Soldier’ is one of many poems by Duffy which deals with the subject of human mortality. Duffy expresses what could have been over a harsh reality; this is characteristic of her as also seen in ‘Last Post’ and ‘Passing Bells’ which both seem to be largely influenced by poet peer Wilfred Owen’s personal experiences of war. In the ‘The Falling Soldier’ Duffy paradoxically captures the essence of Robert Capa’s famous photograph of a man falling after being shot during the Spanish Civil War (1936). She employs the form of an impersonal narrative voice, using second person to question the possibilities, to explore the tragic and cyclical nature of war. The futile reality of war contrasts to her central theme in ‘The Bees’ anthology of bees symbolising the grace left in humanity.
We do not need to be worry and doubt about it since God will always send his blessings through people around us. What we need to do when we are down is always believe that there will be help and have a faith of the help. Believing for someone is also important, when we feel alone then it is better to
Temptations are one of life’s most riveting tests or enticements that we face diurnal. Moreover, it causes us to yearn for something that we do not necessarily need or it causes us to sin. Furthermore, if we give into temptation, we may be blissful, but it will only be ephemeral. It is because of “The Fall of Man” that sin is second nature for us, which in turn makes it facile to give into temptation. In other words, as the verbal expression goes “we were born in sin and live therein.” As a result, our temptations can either make us or break us. The Bible states in Romans 7:19 that “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (King James Version). Strictly speaking, albeit we aspire to do good, because of our sinful nature, it becomes a struggle. However, it is for this reason, our nefarious nature that God sent down his son from Heaven, to give us hope. My definition of hope is “a positive anticipation of God’s promise.” It is this hope that gives us a reason to live, a reason to go on and vigor to surmount these temptations. Moreover, it is his death, burial and resurrection that gives us the hope of his saving grace. Nevertheless, despite the fact that hope is inexhaustible, temptation is inevitable, therefore, the Gospel according to Matthew 26:41 states” Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak (King James Version).