Wake-Up Call

Wake-Up Call

We are the new live tradition
     singin' redemption songs
     with our fake plastic smiles
     and our love in hotel rooms, wallets
in Atlantic City, and hope rusting
     in melted candle wax.  
     Study to show yourself approved, and yet
     we let fathers in cathedrals dribble down
     their particular versions of God's Word.
It is time for a wake-up call.
     Consider it a call to arms, a time
     to reclaim what belongs to the branches
     of the vine.  Where is sanctity anymore?
     It seems lost, floated out on the tide of a new generation.
Progress.  Modernization.  Forward-moving.
     We can buy beer on Sundays now, but can not
     pray in our citadels of education where
     spiritually-derelict children are shooting
     each other.  WAKE UP.
Grow beyond the bake sales and the craft shows and
     go serve the homeless, the addicts, EVERY ONE
     who does not fit your personal standards of 
     righteousness.  God has called us to 
                        love...
Wake up.  It's a pulpit, not a podium,
     an altar, not a stage,
     a congregation, not an audience...
     hearts, for God's sake!  HEARTS;
     not pockets.  The world is naked
and starving for just a touch from the Lord,
     but we can be too caught up in our 
     legalistic versions of holiness
     and how things are supposed to be
     that we can completely miss how they
                         are.
                           Wake up.