Choose Your Story

What kind of story do you want to live in?

One where you need to have greed so you'll win?

One where with might you must fight other folk?

Or acquire the power their rights to revoke?

Or in fantasy flee while the world needs repair?

Or surrender to death, decay and despair?

Or to answer the call from the God who made all,

Who saw us rather than rise choose to fall.

He didn't give up but instead became man

To show us how with this own Spirit we can

Live without greed, choose not to fight,

But with love and forgiveness set God's world aright.

With his words, he enlightened,

With his touch, the sick healed,

With no army or wealth,

Great power did he wield.

When those who had wealth, power and might

Seized him, he told his disciples, “Don't fight!”

He willingly went to suffer and die.

On the cross, it appeared his whole life was a lie.

Abandoned, he prayed with his very last breath,

And his tale should have ended, like ours, with cruel death.

All hope, with his body, lay dead in a tomb;

His disciples all hid, enshrouded in gloom.

One morning some went, one last duty to pay.

But the tomb they found empty; the stone rolled away.

The men, still in hiding, heard the women arrive,

But could not believe that they saw him alive!

Their door remained shut against those that they feared,

Yet the One who is Life crossed death's gate and appeared.

“I'm alive! I can eat. You can touch me, you see.

Breathe my Spirit within. Take your cross. Follow me.”

And they did. Through the world with this tale they did wend.

And they died, yet God's story of love did not end.

For the tale of the God who is Love lives today.

It calls to folks still; it will not go away.

For the story that lives in your head and your heart

Is the one, in the end, in which you will take part.

Does love conquer hate? Does death finally lose?

Does God's goodness win? What do you choose?

Though power and greed tell you just to give in,

What kind of story do you want to live in?