I know it has been a while since I last posted on this website… Let’s just say circumstance has not been so generous in affording me time for this labour of love. That being said, I would like to share with you a spoken word piece I did a month ago in collaboration with The Gospel Experience Germany, an annual music conference in Hanau. It’s about the gospel, but I approached it as an epic tragedy, focussing on the fall of man from the Garden of Eden.
Do you perceive it?
From a long way off
During the foundation of the earth
A music sheet was scored
Good.
The night, the light, the sky
The sea, the sun, the moon
Birth earth and plants and life
Crawling, walking, flying
God created it all
For his pleasure. Good right?
But not good enough, the Maker
Took clay and fashioned a model in his image
He gave it breath, and it leapt alive.
There was man,
A very good thing. In union with creation,
A harmony in the song called Eden,
What pride it brought him, what pleasure it gave him
To see his little labourer live
Without shame. To walk in the cool of day
With the Great I Am,
Naked,
Not needing to cover up
Or dress up
Like men of standing do.
Instead he embraced God and God him
The most beautiful expression of life
To see Goodness in its fullness
And contemplate its magnificence.
Still,
Even this was not good enough
There was a rift,
For good means not bad,
Even in Eden, Adam’s paradise.
Something was very bad
While the first man discovered Eve
And the oneness of matrimonial bliss,
An angel light thought too highly of his station.
He thought himself superior to his orchestrator,
Schemed a rebellion in heaven only
To fall like lightning and wonder the earth
Stumbling into this very good thing.
Perfect union between God and man
Without vanity or shame
Amenity or disdain.
It was sweet to the ear
And sweeter to the tongue.
Forked - Lucifer slithered
To the couple.
With reason as pleasing as peaches,
He coiled around the heart of men,
Creating dissonance in the symphony
"You won’t die,"
“No,” he must have said.
“You will be like God,
Knowing good and evil”
The rest is history.
It's what we call tragedy,
The rise and fall of good men,
Again and again at the clutches of sin
No one could measure up to the law:
From Adam to Abraham, from Moses to Malachi
Because good is never godly,
And sadly, we are easily persuaded by our vanity
That we are little gods,
Thinking we are good:
as in better than that man
The neighbour, the samaritan,
Knowing their shame,
Pronouncing guilt
Where there is regret and pain.
It’s Adam and Eve all over again.
I am here to tell you the truth
In the score of human history
No one is good
Except God.
And the law is good
Because it writes what is wrong.
It is a mirror to our hearts,
A tuning pin to our soul,
The light to our darkness.
You have to accept that
We all fall short,
And our shortfall condemns us,
As it is a moral debt needing clearance,
Which begs the question:
Who will give an account?
Who will serve your sentence?
Who will redeem your life?
I'll give you a moment...
Many deadmen roam
In the land of the living,
Some with ideas and others with hands
Desperately clasping at something
Up in heaven. Something that looks like peace
Yet it escapes them,
Because peace is a person
Whose spit could heal the blind,
Because peace is a person
Whose voice could raise the dead,
Because peace is a person
Whose feet could tread on water
Such a man would see us,
Us in our hopelessness and pride,
Us in our envy and spite,
And not consider equality with God
Something to his own advantage, but
Took on the nature of a servant
In form of human likeness and
Humbled himself unto death on a cross
That we might cross over into eternal life,
If we only believe:
Jesus is the son of God,
And by him and him alone,
We are reconciled to the Father
And enjoy goodness of the Lamb in land
Where the burning tiger roams.
Not because we try to be good,
Because God is good,
And God is love,
And in his heart longed for us
To dine at his eternal table,
For a party in a new earth,
And this poem is the invite.
Come one, come all!
The banquet is open,
The wine has been poured,
The bread has been broken,
The choir has sung
About a gift called grace!
Samuel Rubadiri 