Nathaniel Crose / Abundance Jar

NATHANIEL CROSE, AGE 14

There’s a jar in my home

Filled with the joys I hold dear

It shines brighter and brighter with each passing year.

My joys aren’t too grand

Or covered in gold

Instead, they’re small dreams that will never grow old.

Thunderstorms at night,

Or a cozy winter storm

I find delight when the world is cold and I am warm.

I love resting after a long day

In a clean and organized room

And kicking up my feet with nothing really to do.

But it’s not just the relaxing things I enjoy

It is grinding day after day with a true runner’s grit

And the satisfaction that award brings when you finally earn it.

However, sometimes the weight of the world is too much

The jar goes dark, my Light seems gone

And I forget the joys that once made me strong.

I trudge through the day

Without meaning or scope

Until at last my jar shines with newly found Hope.

So that is my abundance jar

My treasure, my heart, my soul

I hope you too find pleasure in the things that make me whole.

Nathaniel Crose

Nathaniel Crose is an 8th-grade student at Decorah Middle School (soon-to-be High School Freshman). He is in band, chorus, cross country, and track & field. Nathaniel enjoys reading, learning, drawing, listening to music and podcasts,
and running in his free time.

Editor’s Note: We created Future Focused, a new Inspire(d) column written by pre-teens and teens, to help give the next generation an opportunity to share their voices. Partnering with Dana Hogan, the Extended Learning Program teacher at Decorah Middle School, we offered prompts around the idea of abundance for this issue (and Dana had the genius idea of a metaphorical “Abundance Jar”). Students submitted some really great work, and five were chosen for this Inspire(d). Check out the rest of them, and all the Future Focused submissions published so far! Here’s to Listening to the Next Generation!

– Inspire(d) Editor-in-Chief Aryn Henning Nichols

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