Open Up the Doors for Makenna

Here’s the church, here’s the steeple

Open up the doors and see all the people

                                          

She was little when she heard the story

She was bitty, head high to Bodi dog,

When her father put her hands together

And her mother sang the song.

Here’s the church, here’s the steeple

Open up the doors and see all the people

Here's the parson going upstairs,

And here he is saying his prayers.

She was ready, once she heard His story,

For His pity, His dying for the dogs,

So she gathered all her friends together,

And the Spirit sang the songs.

Here’s the church, here’s the steeple

Open up the doors and see all the people

Close the doors and let them pray

Open the doors and they have all gone away

She made the people around her happy

She, not so much, just praying for a day

When her faith would pull her life together

And her troubles - drive away.

But sometimes life just doesn’t work that way,

There’s more to it than that - and sometimes less;

Good friends will spend their best days together

Even when their best nights are an awful mess.

She did.

Here’s the church, here’s the steeple

Open up the doors and see all the people

Then one day she saw herself so plainly,

A child of God, undisguised, bare and bald;

She was seeing in the mirror dimly

Before she even turned twenty years old

In dark glass she saw the Artist’s delight,

Not in the smiling face the world expects,

But in the scars that held her life together -

Endless love hanging ‘round her neck.

Here’s the church, here’s the steeple

Open up the doors and see all the people

Close the doors and let them pray

Open the doors and they have all gone away

She went to the church and she looked inside

She saw pianos, organs, and a choir

She heard the angels all sing together

And she knew that He was there.

She never looked back, she just ran ahead

Into her life like a kid at the fair;

The saints were there, they all sang together;

She saw His heaven there.

She did.

Here’s the church, here’s the steeple

Open up the doors and see all the people

________________________________________________

Based on Testimony by Makenna Loerwald

(http://butwehadheart.wordpress.com/my-story/testimony/)

James A. DeLong

February 19, 2014