A PULSE IS NOT A LIFE

A PULSE IS NOT A LIFE

A pulse still beats
beneath the bridge tonight.
The newspapers will call it survival.
The city will call it service.
The system will call it success.

But the soul knows the difference
between existing
and living.

A pulse is not a home
where children sleep without fear.
A pulse is not medicine
waiting before sickness becomes ruin.
A pulse is not rest
after years of grinding exhaustion.
A pulse is not dignity
beneath wages that cannot shelter life.

The heart may continue beating
while hope quietly starves.

There are people alive in body
who have been abandoned socially,
buried economically,
and forgotten publicly
long before death arrives.

For life is more than the refusal to die.

Life is laughter returning to tired rooms.
Life is bread without humiliation.
Life is labor that does not devour the worker.
Life is a locked door at night
and children dreaming safely behind it.
Life is being seen
not as a burden to manage
but as a neighbor worth loving.

The cruelest poverty
is not only hunger of the stomach,
but hunger of belonging—
the slow erosion of the belief
that one’s existence matters to the world.

And so the question remains
beneath every policy,
every shelter bed,
every crowded emergency room,
every exhausted worker riding the last bus home:

Is society merely keeping people breathing,
or is it restoring the conditions
where life itself can bloom again?

Because a pulse may delay the grave,
but only justice, mercy, and human nearness
can make a life fully alive.

Pastor Steven G. Lee
St. GMC Corps
May 9, 2026