Lord I was born and you gave me strength,
A tiny beating heart, and along I went.
As a little thing I learned to love,
My mommy, my grandpa, but I didn’t yet know you,
God.
As I grew you gave me choice,
My heart found beauty,
Through song, my voice…
Songs of love, and dreams of grandeur
To warm the blood, with nobilities’ valor…
My little heart fully engaged,
With the romance of that perfect golden age.
That golden visage for all does shatter,
With encroaching steps upon our youth.
How this weary life our hope does batter.
How that imagined vista slowly shrinks,
How those lofty dreams of splendor,
In the darkness slowly sinks.
I searched again for comfort,
To quicken me as once before,
Parties, and lovers, cynical science,
Anything I might worship and adore.
I left no spice untasted.
I left no flesh untouched.
I left no opportunity wasted.
But it didn’t add up to much.
I learned clever philosophy,
These Christians, with a laugh,
Where the first dismissed.
Then I turned my oh-so-cleverness,
To a never ending check-list…
Oh beloved Lord, you could have left me,
To this sad blind fate.
For it was by no power of my own,
That darkness of the flesh that I escaped…
When the Light of your great beauty came,
It slew me!
I was prostrate, face down on the floor!
Aware suddenly, of that noble beauty,
Oh God, you alone are worthy to be adored.
All the rest of life’s distractions can leave me,
Please go, they must depart.
For I desire now the Ancient love,
I have been given me, a new heart.
A heart that beats solely for Thee.
I am nothing but dust before the Almighty.
So changed am I, as if awakened –
I have glimpsed it, and it has taken,
All captivity of my soul…
My old desires are like rags to me now,
It seems all so stupid, what I once found high-brow.
Parties and lovers and adventures and bliss,
Like ash in the mouth, like a tragic abyss…
I can tell you where the earthly me died.
I can take you to the place, recite the day and the hour.
Wherein this useless vessel,
Was touched by true power.
Through no merit of my own,
I received a new heart.
I received a New North Star,
And I made a new start…
What I had been so quick to dismiss,
In my hasty youth,
Now shone within me, impossible to resist,
An anomaly of Truth.
Conversion comes in many shapes,
Sometimes gentle, sometimes rough.
But for all us converts,
It is perfect, and it is enough.
