Amid earth's press and stress and strife, What is it really rules your life?
Four terrible tyrannies, I find. Now mold the human heart and mind:
The TV, the Telephone, the Tongue.
The Press (that robs the old and young Of many precious hours of time,
By reading scandal sheets of crime).
A person's souls is not his own,
While he still has a Telephone!
Your TV soon becomes a curse,
Or maybe it is something worse,
If it has mesmerized your mind,
Until the fatal day you find
That it controls your ears and eyes,
It has such a power to hypnotize,
Manipulates our minds and hearts;
With paralyzing power imparts
Some subtle sensitizing sin
Within the soul─deep, deep, within!
The color of the soul is dyed
By what we've seen and heard and tried.
Two other tyrannies I find,
That now manipulates man's mind:
The Press─its daily dose of news
Is what corrupted minds now choose.
Before their eyes they see unfurled
The crimes of all the underworld!
(It leaves no time to get in touch With Heaven, which they need so much!)
The other "fire-brand"called the tongue,
From which so many wars have sprung;
Which makes so many hearts to break;
(In Eden 'twas a snake that spake),
And ever since, the tongue has been
The cause of sorrow, strife, and sin!
The tongue that gossips, woe is man;
The Chinese proverb states their plain:
(Who gossips and who listens─each should be hung, The one by the ear, the other by the tongue).
Press, TV, Tongue, and Telephone
Could bring the greatest blessings known,
If dedicated to God's cause,
And help the world to love God's laws!
But who can live a life serene,
Through peasant, preacher, king, or queen,
While pressures force us in a squeeze
And rule is through earth's tyrannies?
This earthly rat race takes its toll─
O "Watch and Pray" or Lose your soul!
Adlai Albert Esteb was poet Laureate of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
