The Story (A Spoken Word)

(album: Vice & Virtue - 2015)

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 "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