Entering the Promise Land

A poem based off Numbers 13 and 14

Photo by Eddie & Carolina Stigson on Unsplash

Send us back; don't make us go
into conflict, into a land of giants,
into a blank future where we are
not orchestrators or warriors or
even slaves to another's procedures.
Take us back to the past
where I'm sure things were better.

We've looked into ourselves and
found nothing to support this conquest:
no courage, no strength, no skills.
And these pictures we've painted 
of that future where you send us
depict shame and ruin and trouble.

This new land differs too greatly
from what we know, 
the land of Pharaohs
where we were mastered 
and the future was set
like a cycling wheel, 
turning and repeating
without a God's interruption.

Why can't you be a God who leaves us alone:
as hardening lumps of clay, slaves to the old ways?
You have placed the earth, moon, and stars in cycles.
You have timed the seasons to repeat.
Even the animals live to die.

But you have fashioned mankind
to grow into being
orchestrators and warriors
and painters who look on a blank future
And paint you there 
in all your glory and splendor,
power and might,
love and protection;
thus, making it possible 
for us to enter in.