THE NARROW DOOR

by Dee Wade

It’s just like Jesus,
uprooting what we thought snugly sown;
the inviting Jesus, warm and gracious
suddenly sets strictures for his society:
“unless you squeeze through the narrow door
you won’t get in and you won’t get me,
cause anybody can say Lord, Lord,
but only the discipled does the Lord’s Word.”

Do we really need Jesus now,
with his mood shift toward the exclusive?
We have our rich Italian shoes
and German cars and French food
and Arab oil and Chinese everything else
bought with American money.
The genome belongs to us;
we can engineer our own future.

It’s low, too, this doorway to Jesus,
demanding the shorter with the thinner.
You must bend down far to the ground,
manicured hands grasping the world’s grime,
belly scraping the bottom as you crawl
into paradise, an humble man, a penitent
woman.

And a starving child will lead you,
God speaking from below.
Jesus resides in a gated community?
Perhaps — a gate closed to the self-sufficient —
for if you want to get close to Jesus
you have to get close to the poor,
or close to the wee ones, or the sad or the ill.
I fold my card-table camel-legs underneath me
and eye the eye of the needle, seeking smallness.
Only grace can save me now.