A Poem for the Church

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RELIGION:

What we don’t understand,

Let’s judge, let’s judge

After all it’s so different from us

We know the way,

The path is laid out

And follow it you must

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Let us teach, let us teach

Far and wide, one and all

Let us teach the way we should go

For others must learn

The way we have learned

And take on our burdens of woe

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We look with concern

We peer with disdain

Mistakes and false notions are clear

If only they’d listen

Just listen to us

They could follow our way without fear

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But they are too foolish, too foolish indeed

Our plain truth to see and submit

We have explained and explained, explained and explained

(For the Spirit they cannot yet hear)

We know the way and we see all so clear

How insulting when they turn away

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We see each one’s errors

Their prisons of sin

The temperaments holding them sway

We could tell them the way

The way out of it all

If only they’d trust us, obey

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ABANDONMENT:

We love you, Kind Friend, we hear what you say

But we must out and away

To the Spirit of God who calls us and yearns

To the joy of abiding in Him

For in you, in you we cannot abide

We must abide in Him

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Please come if He woos you to run in this way

But, if not, pray believe that it’s true

That we hear Him and answer His call to the dance

Please wish us Godspeed and adieu

For the Spirit of God calls us out to this dance

In the moonlight, on the heather, in the snow

To run, wild and free, after Him, after Him

To run wild and free after Him

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His burden’s so light; His FRUIT is so free,

Untrammeled, uncontrolled by men:

         Not in the darkling city, oppressed

         Not in the alchemist’s lab, debased….

              (Through logic, planning, goodsense)

         But in the free flow of the dance

         Wherever His Spirit would lead

         For Jesus Christ is liberty!

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Whosoever will, the invitation reads

Dressed in His clothing, all white and pure

As the dance winds its way o’er meadow and hill

Thousands arise from the sand

Leaping with joy, they join in the dance

The fruit, eternity’s prisoners unbound

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Dear friend, if you hear this,

If your heart leaps on high,

Lay down the burden of pride

Cast all your cares, your burdens on Him

Let His love and His joy your heart guide

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Then springs the fruit forth

Straight from the earth

For Hope is the sunshine, Love is the rain,

Trust is the most fertile ground

Joy the harvester of the white fields

For whose harvest Jesus was slain

Kaylyn Turner  April 25, 1993

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POEM COMMENTARY by Kaylyn:

The references to temperament and the melancholy temperament refer to a specific church that used the Temperament Theory as a way of categorizing people. Prophets were dismissed as being of a Melancholy Temperament!

There is a reference to an ALCHEMIST’S lab.  Alchemy was the search for a way of turning a cheap base metal into gold. They wanted to obtain true gold through artificial means in order to avoid paying the price for gold. This unsuccessful search lasted several centuries.

I believe what is meant here is that the spiritual alchemist (religion, the institutional church) searches for a way of producing gold (fruit-salvation of the lost) through base metal (works and the efforts of men) to avoid paying the price (laying down of self) for true gold. This search has also lasted several centuries.

In this metaphor, gold is the fruit (salvation of the lost).  The base metal is various systems of works and ministry: planning, logic, good sense.  Of course, just as in the natural world where gold is only created by God who does it all, we can discover gold through following Him, but we can’t control it or produce it.  And we must pay the huge price of completely laying down ourselves, being broken; we must be willing to take up the cross and for that our hands must be empty of self:  our plans and desires even for the good things, e.g., a plan to produce fruit for God.  It is this price that the church is unwilling to pay:  being consumed by Him.

I believe, for this reason that the judgment of God is falling on America more because of the self-righteous actions of the church than the horrific sins of the lost and destroyed.