this is a story a story about a hero and a damsel a villain and a scandal bend down untie your sandals cause where we re going is holy ground starts like this in the beginning there was the hero and the hero was the father and the hero was the spirit and the hero was the son and if this hurts your head already welcome to the kingdom immutable inscrutable infinitely glad hearted triune perfection his ancient love reverberated off each member with no hint of dissension perfect in unity perfect in diversity holy trinity and even before the rocks could cry out his name he was singing his own praises how could he not you know anyone else who goes by the rock of ages he needed nothing from no one as if something made could improve upon his majesty his majesty s amp was already at 11 and if this was the end of our story that d be enough for us to glory for a thousand eternities at him but our story isn t over cause one day the hero started speaking and when he started speaking things started being light night wind water mud moons seas and spiders swimmers and flyers gallopers and gliders stars and seasons rhyme and reason to all of it and all of it was good and suddenly all the commotion came to a standstill when our hero bent down fashioned his damsel god leaned over our body of earth breathed life into our lungs made our heart beat from dirt he put light in our eyes he gave us each other and he gave us himself as a prize and we were naked and were not ashamed but of course the plot thickens enter stage right the villain the serpent was craftier than any beast in the garden he made a beeline for the tree line and found eve and her husband and in less than fifty words he convinced perfectly satisfied people they were starving to death and since that day god s damsel has known nothing but starving to death the poison of asps is heavy on her breath we traded the glory of the incorruptible god for a silly substitute like a school kid duped into giving up his brand new jordan s for a pair of worn out tennis shoes we became dark hearted bent inward on a mission to find within ourselves the solution like trying to number the stars while gazing through l a s air pollution we couldn t see and we fell in love with lesser things and we bought them each a diamond ring and we betrayed our maker our husband our king let me clarify this doesn t just apply to the treacherous and murderous even the best of us are as bad as the worst of us outwardly clean but inside full of dead men s bones like the taj mahal it looks good and all but there s nobody home and one terrible day we looked around but there was no more villain to be found he crawled inside of us like a virus rewired us and now the damsel is the villain as well we tied our own self to the train tracks the horn blows and careening toward us is 10 000 tons of god s wrath sounds so loud you can barely hear the screaming who will save us from the body of this death enter stage left jesus of nazareth the word became flesh and dwelt among us he came lowly perfectly holy he came like a groom on his way to the altar to meet the bride and for the dowry he had no cash so he paid with his life are you shocked by the consequence of sin be more shocked by the mercy of him couldn t free ourselves so christ became our freedom couldn t fill these lungs so he became our breathing we live because he died once a harlot now a bride sins were scarlet now made white perfect by proxy saved by a surrogate holy through him the hero and the damsel are one once again but wait i haven t told you the best part yet as if there wasn t enough here already to impress you the best part about this story is the story is true the only fairytale that s not a fairytale so long mother goose farewell dr seuss this here s the genuine article god made we strayed god s love displayed god man gives grace stands in our place our sins erased debt paid always so fall on your face and give god all praise1