One day Jesus is coming back is what
\nthey swear at Sunday School and Amen and
\nHallelujah and Amen-and-Amen
\nbut No man knoweth the hour and neither
\ndoes no woman, any woman I mean,
\nthere’s no mention of children there and all
\nI can remember of kids is Suffer
\nthe little children to come unto Me
\nbut why should they make me suffer to get
\nme to go–Hell, I’m suffering as it
\nis so I asked Miss Hooker to explain,
\nshe’s our Sunday School teacher and she laughed
\nand then smiled, I think I would’ve smiled and
\nthen laughed but what do I know and then she
\nsaid Jesus doesn’t mean suffer like you
\nthink He does but I’m happy, Gale, that you
\nbrought it up so that I can clarify
\nit for your classmates next week, “clarify”
\nmeans wriggle off the hook, I guess, then she<\/p>\n\n\n\n
went on to explain did Miss Hooker that
\nJesus meant encourage the children to
\ngo to Him and forbid them not which is
\nfancy for and don’t try to stop ’em, there’s
\nnothing to fear about the Son of God
\nunless you’re a devoted sinner and
\ndeny Him not only three times but many
\nand never ask Him to forgive you to
\nboot, then you’re in a Hell of a jam says
\nMiss Hooker, though she didn’t say Hell and
\ncursing’s a sin, I may not know about
\nwhat’s good but I do know something about
\nsin, I kind of pride myself on that, I
\nguess I learned it the hard way and I’d learn
\nit to Miss Hooker if I thought that she
\nwas mature enough to handle it and
\ncome to think of it what about Jesus,
\nhow could He know about sin unless He
\ncommitted a few, too? Miss Hooker said<\/p>\n\n\n\n
that I’m coming close to blasphemy so
\nI should go home and pray starting after
\nlunch and not letting up until supper
\nand after supper though she didn’t men
\n-tion dessert I should take it up again,
\nprayer that is, And while you’re at it, Gale,
\nshe said, try taking up the Cross as well.
\nI said Yes ma’am but I haven’t got one,
\na cross I mean and as for taking it
\nup I’m not even sure what that means, I
\nthought that it’s the Cross that took up Jesus.
\nI was halfway on my walk homeward
\nwhen that came to me, I almost doubled
\nback to tell Miss Hooker but I was so
\nhungry I had to live by bread alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in several countries and is the author of three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One day Jesus is coming back is what they swear at Sunday School and Amen and Hallelujah and Amen-and-Amen but No man knoweth the hour and neither does no woman, any woman I mean, there’s no mention of children there and all I can remember of kids is Suffer the little children to come unto … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-r0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1715,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions\/1715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}