Bible Belt Builders

No score and three years ago
I came to the Bible Belt
Where churches are custom as Scions
And as holy, Catholic and apostolic
As Gander in Turkey Creek.
Smiling faces, all from Atlanta, line the bookshelves,
All wearing ties
With seven simple stupid steps
To finding God’s will for your life.
I never knew it was lost;
The red letters must have missed something.
After all, Jesus was only a man.
Too many are chained not just to sin
But to an altar call at age eight,
A cultural Christianity,
A simple prayer lost in the decades of addiction,
Freed from righteousness.

At this crossroads, some would want a new foundation,
A new sensation to ring in the tribes, tongues and nations.
I want the old one,
The one crying in the wilderness,
The one of glorious, green, groaning, growing gardens of Creation,
The one of parted seas,
The one of Calvary’s tree,
The one of Golgotha’s altar bloodier than the blot red altars of Leviticus’ priests,
The river from His hands, His head, His feet
Like Moses’ plagued Nile flowing anew,
As Watts once wrote, “Did e’er such love and sorrow meet?”
God gets no glory out of your best life now
But out of this:
To take the curse and blot out my shame,
Holy God in perfect love became
Perfect man to bear my blame.
The wrath of God towards sin in one man,
While still sinner, Christ died for us.

The stone the Bible Belt builders have rejected
Has become the cornerstone.
Lay that, and you’ll find one holy, Catholic apostolic Church.

TagsBelt, Bible, Builders, Church, David, poem, Poetry, Wells