Soul Chasm: Explained

If you didn't already guess, the thing I'm talking about in this poem is sin. I named the poem "soul chasm" because sin separates us from God. A spiritual chasm, if you will. Here's a simple breakdown of the thought process:

Everyone has what no one wants

Everyone is born with sin. There's no escaping that fact.

Once attained it cannot be forgotten

Sin isn't exactly the kind of thing you can forget about.

It gnaws away at our existence

Our existence was originally meant to be perfect, a simple union between man and God. But then Adam sinned, and everything changed. Now, sin runs completely rampant in our society. The more we sin, the more our existence becomes rooted in our sin. We become so fixated on the temporal, that we forget about what is eternal.

And hides below the surface,

Waiting

The people who seem happy? They're really hurting underneath. It's just a facade.
I put the word "Waiting" at the end, because sin loves to wait for its next opportunity to ensare.

We store it away

And bury it with a shovel

But it delights in this

And dances with the darkness

In a midnight nocturne

Rejoicing

Now that I've said the meaning behind the poem, this part should be fairly obvious. And in fact, it kinda ties in with the last part. No one wants their sins to be known, so they hide them away from sight. But of course, sin thrives in the dark. The word "Rejoicing" at the end depicts how sin feels when hidden away.

Because we do not realize who it is

We welcome it into our home.

The stranger lies to enter in

And hides in many masks.

Deception

Sin takes a lot of different forms, and because of this, we don't always recognize sin when we see it. So we invite it into our life, and there it lives. Until too late, we see it for what it really is. "Deception" is the game sin played to get into our life.

Time passes, and it laughs

We trick ourselves into thinking it left

But we realize how wrong we actually were.

When our complacency sends us spiraling.

Despairing

Again, this part ties into the last. Only after it's too late do we see the severity of the sin. It's grown in our life. It's deeply rooted, hard to remove. And just when things start going well for us, and things seem normal again, we realize that the sin never really left in the first place. When we grow complacent is when sin creeps back into our life. "Despairing" is how the host of the sin feels at this point.

Once apparent

It reveals who we really are

Others will see it

And some will take the one way street

To exit stage right

Hoping

Even though we hate our sin, we keep committing the same crimes over and over again. Why? It's a reflection of our selfishness. Our sin exposes that selfish nature. Others will see that sin, and leave, scared by what they see. It destroys relationships. "Hoping" is at the end here, because the victim of the sin is hoping for a way out. Pleading, almost.

There are many roads.

The roads are worn and beaten

And they are easy to travel.

When we think we are alone

is when we see the many footprints in the dirt

Wondering

Essentially, all this passage is saying is that you're not alone in your struggles. It might feel like that at times, but that's exactly what the enemy wants you to think. The "footprints in the dirt" are the numerous people who have walked through the same sin. But, every path has an end. "Wondering" because this is when the host starts to wonder if they were actually alone this whole time.

The day has come for us to face it
testing the might of our soul
Some fail, but others succeed
And we when it is defeated

We make it as part of us

Rather than a mercurial counterpart

Liberation

I hold fast to the phrase "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Instead of pushing our struggles away, we learn from it, and allow it to grow us. "Liberation" should be pretty self explanatory here. The victim of sin is finally free. 

So let me make one thing clear here: I wrote this poem as a narrative of one man's struggle with sin, so it kinda sounds like that a solo effort is a tangible feat. But without God, nothing is possible. You can hold on longer by yourself. You can try harder by yourself. But you can never defeat sin without God. Not fully. Just because God wasn't mentioned in this poem, that doesn't mean I don't recognize his vital role in defeating sin. Here's what I did mean:

In our struggles with sin, we have a part, and God has a part. This poem was written from the perspective of our part.  I'm going to use the analogy of a farmer here. Picture a farmer out in the fields, planting his crops. He plows his fields. He sows his seeds. Then he waits. Because there is nothing he can do about the weather. He must trust in God, and leave everything up to him, because there is nothing more he can do for his crops at this point. The farmer cannot control the wind, or the rain, or the sun. Only God can do this. In the same way, there are many elements of our sin that we cannot overcome. Only God can do that. 

Tomorrow: The White Train