“Moving Targets”: A Poem About Faith When Life Keeps Changing

Some seasons of life refuse to stand still. You change homes, schools, jobs or relationships faster than you can catch your breath, and it can feel as if you are too unsettled for anyone, even God, to reach. Jonathan Anthony Burkett’s short poem “Moving Targets” answers that fear with one striking image: a Father who never misses, even when the target keeps moving.

The poem

Moving targets
That’s what our father hits
No matter the challenge
Try and he’ll guide you
All the way

Believe in yourself
And never be ashamed
For doubt and unbelief
Weakens us

Feeling threatened along the road
Call on him
Feeling that life will never change
Call on him

However, always believe and try
For our father hits
Moving targets

— Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Neglected But Undefeated (2012)

A life that kept moving

Jonathan knows what it means to be a moving target. Born in Miami, he was raised by his grandparents in Westmoreland, Jamaica, then brought back to South Florida at six. As a teenager he was put out of his mother’s house again and again. He describes moving “north to south, and then from west to east,” sleeping on different sofas and in strange places. He slept in parks, at bus stops, in a friend’s car and, for a while, in a homeless shelter. He changed schools so often that Everglades High School in Miramar was his third high school, and there were more after it.

Through all of that, he lived with seizures that could strike at school, at work or on the street. If anyone had reason to feel too scattered to be found, it was him.

Faith that wavered, and came back

The poem speaks plainly about “doubt and unbelief,” and Jonathan never pretends his own faith was steady. He grew up believing in God in Jamaica, and as a boy he went to church and Bible study week after week. He held on through hard nights: “However, I still had faith in my Father, and I knew that he was watching over me night and day.”

But as life got harder, God seemed to be there less. At one of his lowest points, after a devastating conversation with his mother, he went outside and told God: “I still believe in you and in spirits, though, but I do not know if I can ever believe in your love for your children again.”

That honesty matters. Doubt did not disqualify him. The poem’s promise is not that you will never doubt, but that doubt “Weakens us,” and that you can keep calling anyway.

A pastor who would not give up on him

One of the people who helped him find his way back was a pastor who prayed for him every time she saw him and became attached to him as if he were her own child. She told him to keep going to church and never give up, that trials keep a person strong, that he was capable of change, and that he should take his experiences as lessons. Jonathan summed up her message this way: “if God brought me to it, he’d bring me through it.”

Her words stayed with him. Later, sitting in a jail cell over the holidays, he apologized to God for cursing at Him and thanked God for that pastor. He wrote: “However, now I understand much more about one’s trials—they are all just tests.” The night before his brain surgery in January 2006, he went to church to be prayed for, and told God that if he made it through, he wanted to change.

That is the rhythm of “Moving Targets”: “Feeling threatened along the road / Call on him / Feeling that life will never change / Call on him.”

Believe in yourself, too

It is easy to miss, but the poem asks for two kinds of belief. Belief in God, and “Believe in yourself / And never be ashamed.” When Jonathan was a teenager and doubted he would ever reach his goal of writing one hit song, his therapist and psychiatrist told him, “Don’t ever say that. Believe in yourself, and go for what you want in life.”

Faith is not passive. The poem ends with an instruction: “always believe and try.” You keep moving, and you trust you are not moving alone. As one of Jonathan’s quotes puts it: “Faith is why I'm here today and faith is why I made it through.”

Holding on when life keeps changing

Whatever your beliefs, these practices can help when everything around you is in motion:

• Keep one steady habit. A daily prayer, a journal entry or a short walk can anchor you when your address, job or schedule will not stay put.
• Find your “pastor.” Look for a mentor, faith leader or wise elder who will pray for you, check on you and tell you the truth.
• Be honest about doubt. Say it out loud, to God or to someone you trust. Hidden doubt grows; spoken doubt can be answered.
• Treat trials as lessons. Write down what each hard change is teaching you.
• Keep trying. The poem promises guidance to those who “Try,” not to those who wait until life settles down.

If you know a child who is being neglected or abused, please speak up. If a child is in immediate danger, call 911. In the U.S., the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline is 1-800-422-4453.

For more of Jonathan’s poems and faith-filled quotes, visit the Quotes page. His full journey is told in Neglected But Undefeated on the Books page.

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