Is your church a health hazard?

We know about bats in belfries.
and churchly mice in dire straits.
We know of rising damp and crumbling bricks,
and leaking roofs.
This entropy of things
(depressing though it is),
is not what ails the body that is Church.

Complacency and weariness
are much more to be feared
-- and lassitude and worldliness.
Blindness to glory and numbness to hope
will as surely rot the bricks and mortar of the soul
as tempest, storm and strife.

Love consumed by jealousy,
and empty words and doctrine
and joy embalmed in management and rules;
all suck from us the essence of our faith
and bring about a sickness unto death.

Feel, if you will,
and feel again,
and make your own
the incarnated Word of Life
that freely brings
vitality to souls
that they may rise
and risen, boldly build.

© Karel Reus