This poem was originally written by the great poet and writer Rudyard Kipling. I have taken some liberties to make it a bit more spiritually focused.

If

If you can keep your faith when all about you,

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you

If you can trust in God when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t fear to stand, alone and wise.

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;

If you can pray – and not make prayer your aim;

If you can meet with Victory and Disaster

And treat these two impostors just the same.

If you can bear to hear the Word you’ve spoken

Twisted by men to trap and maim the weak,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken;

And yet still stoop to serve and love and seek.

If you can take your life-built reputation

And risk it for God’s glory and the Cross,

And lose it without pause or hesitation,

And never breathe a word about your loss.

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your God long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the faith that says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or take the lead, yet keep the common touch,

If neither foes nor closest brothers hurt you,

And all souls count with you, but none too much.

If you can fill each unforgiving minute,

With sixty seconds’ worth of race well run,

Then yours is heaven, and everything that’s in it

And you will be a man of God, my son.

Rudyard Kipling