This is a story
A story about a hero and a damsel
A villain and a scandal
Bend down, untie your sandals
Cause where we’re going is holy ground.
Starts like this:

In the beginning there was the Hero,
And the Hero was the Father,
And the Hero was the Spirit,
And the Hero was the Son,
And if this hurts your head already,
Welcome to the kingdom.

Immutable, inscrutable, infinitely
Glad-hearted, triune perfection
His ancient love reverberated off each Member with no hint of dissension,
Perfect in unity,
Perfect in diversity,
Holy Trinity.

And even before the rocks could cry out
His name he was singing his own praises.
How could he not?
You know anyone else who goes by
“The Rock of Ages”?
He needed nothing from no one,
As if something made could improve
Upon his majesty.
His majesty’s amp was already at 11.
And if this was the end of our story,
That’d be enough for us to
Glory for a thousand eternities at him.
But our story isn’t over cause one day
The Hero started speaking.

And when he started speaking,
Things started being.

Light, night, wind, water, mud, moons,
Seas and spiders, swimmers,
And flyers, gallopers and gliders,
Stars and seasons, rhyme and reason to all
Of it and all of it was good.
And suddenly all the commotion Came to a standstill when our hero Bent down fashioned his damsel.
God leaned over our body of earth,
Breathed life into our lungs,
Made our heart beat from dirt.
He put light in our eyes.
He gave us each other,
And he gave us himself as a prize,
And we were naked and were not ashamed.

But of course, the plot thickens
Enter stage right the Villain.

The serpent was craftier
Than any beast in the garden.
He made a beeline for the tree line
And found Eve and her husband,
And in less than fifty words,
He convinced perfectly satisfied people
They were starving to death.
And since that day
God’s damsel has known nothing but
Starving to death.
The poison of asps is heavy on her breath.
We traded the glory of the incorruptible God for a silly substitute,
Like a school kid duped into giving up
his brand new Jordan’s
For a pair of worn out tennis shoes.
We became dark-hearted,
Bent inward on a mission to find
within ourselves the solution,
Like trying to number the stars
While gazing through L.A.’s air pollution,
We couldn’t see,
And we fell in love with lesser things.
And we bought them each a diamond ring.
And we betrayed our Maker,
Our Husband, our King

Let me clarify:

This doesn’t just apply
To the treacherous and murderous.
Even the best of us
Are as bad as the worst of us,
Outwardly clean,
But inside full of dead men’s bones.
Like the Taj Mahal,
It looks good and all,
But there’s nobody home.
And one terrible day
We looked around,
But there was no more villain
To be found.

He crawled inside of us,
Like a virus, rewired us,
And now the damsel
Is the villain as well.
We tied our own self
To the train tracks
The horn blows and careening
Toward us is 10,000 tons
Of God’s wrath sounds so loud
You can barely hear
The screaming chorus,
“Who will save us from the
Body of this death?!”
Enter stage left, Jesus of Nazareth

The Word became flesh
And dwelt among us.
He came lowly,
Perfectly holy.
He came like a groom
On his way to the altar
To meet the bride.
And for the dowry,
He had no cash
So he paid with his life.

Are you shocked
By the consequence of sin?
Be more shocked
By the mercy of him.

Couldn’t free ourselves,
So Christ became our freedom.
Couldn’t fill these lungs,
So he became our breathing.
We live because he died,
Once a harlot, now a bride,
Sins were scarlet,
Now made white,
Perfect by proxy,
Saved by a surrogate,
Holy through him.
The Hero and the damsel are one,
Once again.
But wait,

I haven’t told you the best part yet.
As if there wasn’t enough here already
To impress you the best part
About this story is the story is true,
The only fairytale that’s not a fairytale.
So long, Mother Goose.
Farewell, Dr. Seuss.
This here’s the genuine article.

God made.
We strayed.
God’s love displayed.
God-man gives grace,
Stands in our place.
Our sins erased.
Debt paid always.
So fall on your face,
And give God all praise.