Can Wait

The song was joyful, tempo fast with lots
of voices, instruments in perfect sync, a
tambourine providing back beat to the swaying
of a choir I could envision, black smiling faces
with perhaps a smattering of whites who knew the
difference in clapping on the second/fourth
instead of on the first and third, perfect pitch
and so enthusiastic that you have to jump up
to your feet and shout, but as I listened
to the words again I thought that I would not
be honest if I sang them.
"I just can't wait", it went,
alluding to the Lord's return. Confession time:
I can.
Wait, I mean.
It's fine with me if he waits 50 years or more,
another 1000. I don't care. I guess I should,
but there you go, I don't. I'd like to see
my friends and family come to know him, have
their destinations after death assured. I'd like to see
a headline that the final tribe somewhere in the
Pacific or buried deep within the Amazon's dense
shoreline has fin'lly heard the Gospel and it
has a Bible in its language and I'd like to see the
multitudes come to the Lord, as prophesied before
the end of everything we know, but frankly, I've
got so much on my mind within my tiny little world,
it's almost more than I can muster to remember
that across the globe there's war, beheadings,
martyrs dying and they wonder when, sweet Jesus,
will it end? If that's not Tribulation, I don't
know what is. My own is trivial, compared to theirs,
but mine is here. My dreams are here, not somewhere
there by Jordan's shores, not singing for the chariot
to swing low, come and take me home, don't want
to go. Not yet. It doesn't matter, I suppose. He'll
come for me exactly when he wants to. And he'll
come the final time according to a plan of man
or church's proclamation...not. And if I'm shallow,
or unfeeling, or not spiritual enough because I hope
that he delays and tarries, giving me a chance to
see some of the things I want to see accomplished
in my life, I know that he, at least, will understand.
The dreams, I think, he gave me.
They. Are. Grand.




(c) Ellen Gillette, 2014