Hope, Faith and Death

He looked up from the grimy street, scrubbing his scruffy chin. His filthy tattered clothes did little to protect from hunger and Jack Frost's little nips. You could see the years wrinkled into his skin. His hopelessness shone through his eyes as darkness would in the night. A black hole of misery, a tub of woes - 'When will it all change, when will it end - when will you listen through this din?'

The chapel across the road clanged its solemn peals - one by one they straddled in, like sheep into a fold. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out an old hymnal, saying to himself 'Today is the day it might all change, today my will He will hearken!'

Rubbing his hands, he gathered up and hobbled down the cobbles - for a Saviour, whose light had faded, awaited to be debated. 'When will it change, when will it end - when will you listen through this din? I'm hungry and I'm tired - I think it is time you took me home'

The silence, through the bell tolls, said nothing to calm his yearnings. His joints creaked in harmony, while his fingers kept cramping sorely. His misery was being old, lonely and poor. 'Is there no end to this vapidity - Is there no end at all?'

His wooden Saviour looked on, as his sheep bleated on and on. 'It is not time until it is - then you will join me truly. To go right now, you'll miss the mark for my work in you is yet to be done'

His soul by darkness embittered, his eyes offering dried tears - These words floated unheeded as late winter's winds rolled in. The bleating drilled on and on as daily candles continued to melt and amidst all that agony, hope was rendered naught.

To believe in change, to hope for change, to have faith it will all end truly - which is it, O Son of Man, when death is delayed duly?