To the Reader,

Dear Reader,

This little piece was not written to flatter the age, nor to furnish it with a prettier name for what it already loves. It was written for those who would belong to Christ when belonging costs something.

The world has always had its own liturgies: self as sovereign, appetite as oracle, the present hour as the only court of appeal. Against these the gospel does not negotiate. It calls men strangers in the land they inhabit, pilgrims toward a city they have not built, and servants of a Lord the nations still refuse.

If the lines that follow seem severe, it is because the narrow way is severe. If they seem glad, it is because the One who walked it first is alive. Read them not as a banner against your neighbor, but as a reminder to yourself: when the culture turns from Christ, the church must not turn with it.

May He who is holy keep you holy.

May His word outlast every fashion.

And may you lose the world’s applause, and find in Christ the life that no man can take from you.

—The Poet

We walk as strangers through a borrowed age,
Though streets and markets cry to make us kin;
Men raise their towers on a crumbling stage—
We seek the city God has founded in.

Not of this world, though breathing in its dust,
His kingdom comes without the tyrant’s drum;
He chose the hidden well, the downward thrust,
And made the last the first when He had come.

The age enthrones the self and names it true,
And drinks a sweetness that will leave it dry;
But He who left the glory that He knew
Said, Lose this life, and find the life on high.

Salt of the earth, yet never lost in brine,
A city set that darkness cannot hide;
The cross still cuts across the world’s design,
The Lamb still walks where every Caesar died.

As Noah built while laughter filled the plain,
As Daniel kept the fast they could not break,
We keep a feast the age will not sustain,
And wear the shame that makes the wise ones quake.

When culture turns and sets its face to war
Against the Lord, His word, His holy Name,
We will not bow, nor bargain at the door,
Nor sell His truth to keep the world’s acclaim.