McDaniels’ faith and love for the Lord are transparent in his poetry compilation. Sharing these feelings of wholeness and unfiltered exuberance with his audience is his sole mission. In the process, he manages to impart some salient observations on mankind as its individual members grapple with their different life paths. One such lesson can be found in “Be Yourself,” where the speaker encourages readers to not focus on what others have to the point where they lose sight of their own direction. Using his own example as the focus of “A Man’s Testimony,” he shows how his nine-month self—after suffering a collapsed lung and being dead for twenty minutes—is compelled to begin breathing again by the sheer faith of his father’s pleas not to take his son.

McDaniels examines mankind’s investment in faith in “To Be Free,” where he juxtaposes cheering fans upon a player stealing home plate with the often mundane and bored looks and spirit people carry to church with them week after week. Other poems that stand out include “The Way,” a poem universally relevant to those who are mired in doubt and need life’s roadmap to reroute and “Lost,” which highlights the remarkable innocence of children and their strong connection with God.

Overall, the poems are consistent in structure, with the majority being comprised of five or six quatrains. Though McDaniels does not emphasize a particular rhyme scheme, he does often use personification and alliteration like “sin’s stains” to help get his message across. Moreover, in “No Room for Him,” he probes certain societal traditions like Christmas from the perspective of its true purpose and makes it known that this purpose has largely been forgotten. McDaniels’ poetry is aesthetically pleasing and genuine, a meaningful experience for aficionados of faith-based poetry.

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