promise breakers

we are promise breakers.
We are a world of cutthroat accountants,
balancing faults with virtues,
justifying our failures with
past triumphs or triumphs to come
or even just it'll-never-happen-again.
We may break even but we'll never break out,
we'll always be scrambling towards
justification, rightness, and will
never quite make it.
We will always be promise breakers,
making promises we hope to keep
and simultaneously consider breaking;
we have mastered doublethink.

And that is why we are so complicated;
that is why we tangle ourselves
in disbelief and discouragement,
in failure like phone cord,
when confronted with a God who keeps promises.
What do we know about such things?
Why should we believe that it could be true?
Ought we to say that humanity learned lying
by studying a truth-teller,
that, therefore, a truth-teller must exist?
perhaps, but it is not enough.
We are complicated because
we are confronted with a God
who tells the truth and keep his promises
not for the sake of his health,
but to accomplish something.
We are complicated because we have agreed,
signed on,
and promptly forgotten our promises.
Promise-breakers.
We are complicated because we have all been
taken in hand
and are taught lessons that we do not understand,
because when we fail it looks like failure
but it's still a lesson,
and when we succeed it looks like success
but it's still a lesson.

We are promise-breakers who have promised ourselves
to a promise-keeper;
and that is where all our failure comes from,
and all our hope.