The journey difficult and hard,
black and blue and bitter cold
upon the road thru long days old
and vales of death and darkness.

In hardship and travail we walk
and most of us will quit before
we reach the end, and yet that end
is still a mystery so vast…

It strikes me that of all the ways
to make appeal to human hearts
They chose to magnify the cost
and left rewards as afterthoughts.

What exactly is Their point?
What is promised with this pain
and sacrifice…and…what?  Comes next?
More mumble mumbo turbo trouble?

Fatigue and hardship hand in hand
in times of darkness shared in light?
Not the cheery words that humans
think they need and want, but turn from.

Jesus looked at His best friends
and told them that in this hard world
they could be promised suffering
and then He spoke a miracle:

“Have courage, My dearest friends,
faint not! For I have overcome
the world and all that is there in”
And pain’s denied sour last say!

Somehow the Son of God joins us
within it all and thru it all
So what exactly is success?
Is it simply winning? Tell me!

Because something shines beneath!
Something lurks Gold and Beyond!
I smell victory past defeat
and virtue is its own reward.