Please Hear What I Am Not Saying

From the poem, “Please Hear What I Am Not Saying”

With your power to touch me into feeling

you can breathe life into me.

I want you to know that.

I want you to know how important you are to me,

how you can be a creator--an honest-to-God creator--

of the person that is me

if you choose to.

You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,

you alone can remove my mask,

you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic,

from my lonely prison,

if you choose to.

Please choose to.

Do not pass me by.

It will not be easy for you.

A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.

The nearer you approach to me

the blinder I may strike back.

It's irrational, but despite what the books say about man

often I am irrational.

I fight against the very thing I cry out for.

But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls

and in this lies my hope.

Please try to beat down those walls

with firm hands but with gentle hands

for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder?

I am someone you know very well.

For I am every man you meet

and I am every woman you meet.

Charles C. Finn

September 1966

These words were ones in a poem that my daughter did a paper on for school this morning. This is only a portion of the poem. You can easily find in its entirety on the internet. It rings so loud in my ears with the attempted suicide of two boys that my kids know. It causes me to ponder who each one of us touching is…

Jesus has given us a commission, to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”’ Mark 16:15. I read this poem and have to ask myself if I am missing some of the people right in front of me? Am I overlooking their message?


I read recently that it is not about "taking Jesus with us", but rather about "going with God where He wants to go." It would seem to me then it is also about functioning with God - or submitting to His leading - to touch the lives He wants us to touch with His presence and His love. If we breathe His life in to the people He leads us to won't this fulfill His will.


At the Greenhouse Neil Cole talked about setting your alarm to go off at 10:02... so I did when I came home. It goes off twice a day - both AM and PM. It went off last night and my daughter caught me and said - well, aren't you going to pray. What a timely reminder to pray out of Luke 10:2, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." It takes my daughter to remind me once in awhile... Yet, I desire to have those opportunities - to be one of those laborers. Do you want to join the adventure? I think following Jesus wherever He leads surely is one of the BIGGEST and BEST adventures of my life!