And the Church will say:

I used to live in a house of safe, domesticated faith.

I used formulas and principles and plans,

walking into them with lessons of self-discipline

learned at the feet of academia.

I prayed with a script--

guilt confronting me whenever I slid off its pages.

I put on--but couldn't seem to remove--

layer upon layer of shoulds

and musts

until I slogged along smeared with joy facepaint

masking a countenance of despair.

I told myself I was growing in faith.

How does one grow in safe faith? Safer?

I was respectable, Biblically-literate, dutiful, trustworthy,

Tired.

Too tired to keep Him out--

The extravagant, exuberant, effervescent Lord

Who blew my house down

Without bothering to build me a new one.

So now we live out here in the wild--

The wild blue yonder,

The wild wild west/east/north/south.

He holds me tight and then flings me out in a mad jitterbug.

We laugh until we cry until we laugh.

So unrespectable.

So undisciplined.

And it's all His fault.

He made me love Him and now He won't let me go.

What can I call it?

This faith so far from safe that only the bones are left

to be covered now with gossamer

and steel.

This breathless faith

filled from His lungs with the atmosphere of heaven;

panting after Him with desire;

flung at His feet in worshiping abandon.

This faith that needs a Bride

to contain it;

a zillion people surrendered to the tidal wave of it

sweeping off-feet

off-guard

off-rockers.

This mustard seed atom of faith yet to be split to

explode into eternity.

Untamed faith in a Lion of a God.