The old woman lies in her bed, in her room

The firelight playing on the walls

The blood running by in the streets of the town

The cries of the children down the hall

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She looks back through the shambles of her life

Wracked and ruined by pride and deceit

The desire for fun and to be admired

The love she so constantly seeks

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The divorce that brought hopelessness

Straight to her heart

The cruelty that broke her in two

The abandonment, being tossed to one side

Left her lonely and old through and through

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And now the whole world is in its death throes

As she lies alone in her room

With no one to love her or tend to her needs

She’ll die as she lived–and soon

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She has no knowledge of her King

The One who loved her and died

That she might know of His love for her

And His kingdom right there inside

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Her heart’s hard with bitterness

Her mind filled with fear

As the inferno rages outside

Is there anyone left who can care for her

E’n though her response will be snide?

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Lives still His child

Who will come through the terror,

The danger that now rules the streets

And serve this bitter, caustic old hag

Whom Jesus waits to meet?

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Not out of duty or to look good to men

Nor to build up your own vain pride

But because your heart breaks, her pain to behold

And you’d lay down your life at her side

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Does Jesus live in you and cause you to care

Not at all what happens to you?

But breaks your heart open

At the thought of the lost

Whose torment will never be through?

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With tears in our eyes

Our hearts broken too

Our lives laid down, ready lost

Will we come forth from safety, from blessing profuse

And take up the way of the cross?

Kaylyn Turner April 27, 1993

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Commentary by Kaylyn:

The metaphor in “LAST DAYS OF EARTH” is unusual in that the main theme is God’s cry for His true children to emerge from their prisons of self to die for the lost, rather than to fan their vanity through their Christian image of themselves as people who care for the lost.  While the metaphor is actually secondary, because it will only be seen by the few who understand that the” hag” in the poem is also the apostate American church.  I believe He cries out for His true children to minister to the church which has wandered so far from Him in her pride, deceit, and self-centeredness that she is now lost and no longer has knowledge of her King. This spiritual bankruptcy is flagrant in the charismatic churches as well as in the clearly apostate mainline denominations.  We tend to define apostasy as not believing the Bible as inerrant where God defines apostasy as not abiding in him and putting the idols of self before him.