A creator and a destroyer –
Who dares challenge thy power?
It brings low the mighty from the highest peaks,
and lifts the humble from the depths below.
It governs reason yet defies common sense;
it makes men wage wars
over the fate of a single human,
tearing families apart for its elusive promise.
It drives us faster than horsepower,
propelling reckless, senseless acts
in a desperate bid to secure those which we cherish most.
How can one live for something and also die for it?
Such is love – swift in arrival,
equally fleeting, yet sometimes it lingers,
crawling slowly through quiet moments and lasting a lifetime.
But what of its absence?
A barren heart may drive a father to abandon
a young mother and her two children,
while an abundance of love can compel a mother
to shed blood for the sake of her offspring.
Look upon the devastation born of love’s void.
Consider the ruin: two world wars,
a whirlwind of politics – a cloak for deception –
and the endless tragedies of killings, genocide, bombings, terrorism, rape,
mass murder, and even school shootings among the young.
For Christ’s sake, WHO will carry the banner
of tomorrow when community itself seems lost?
I stand amidst a generation cursed by neglect,
where even greeting one’s elders has become rare.
The rage boiling within me stems from a loss
of the very love I once sought to spread.
I tried to love – yet in doing so,
I was manhandled, mistreated, used, mocked,
ridiculed, and shamed, all for that singular hope.
Why must love be both blessing and curse?
Why, indeed, did Jesus Christ sacrifice His life,
for a vain cause such as us?
Recall the ancient laws – Exodus, Deuteronomy,
Numbers, Leviticus – reduced to two simple commands:
“Love your neighbor as yourself” and “Love God.”
Two timeless sentences that we so often fail to obey.
When tsunamis arise, diseases strike,
and genocides scar the earth, people suffer and cry,
asking, “Where is God?”
He is with us – but why should He help
when we cannot follow these eternal truths?
These two sentences?
And still I wonder: how did God create my mother?
No one should be so perfect – yet she is.
An epitome of beauty and kindness,
a citadel of hard work, discipline, and wisdom;
forged in the crucible of hardship,
she stands as a beacon of love,
a warrior mother who raised her children alone,
her strength and resolve a testament to what real love,
TRUE love,
can be.
Jesse Chukwuka OKEKE
Class of 2025