Oh Dear Preacher...

Oh dear Preacher, dressed in white,

With silver tongue and candlelight,

You stood before the pews and swore

That Heaven waits beyond the door.

You held the Book with trembling hands,

And drew your maps to promised lands,

But in your eyes—a flicker there—

A shadow clothed in saintly prayer.

You spoke of sin with sharpened blade,

Of souls that tremble, unafraid,

Of serpents slithering through shame,

And angels burning with no name.

You called the broken to confess,

But never wore your own distress.

You made your pulpit throne and shield,

And left your human heart concealed.

Oh dear Preacher, robed in grace,

Did mercy ever touch your face?

Did you forget the weary child,

The outcast mocked, the beggar wild?

You said the path was straight and narrow,

But turned your gaze from bloodied arrows.

When cries of pain rang through the night,

You preached of stars, but dimmed the light.

You told me God was always near,

Yet vanished when I wept in fear.

You named my doubts a kind of plague,

And burned my questions in a blaze.

You pointed fingers draped in gold,

While countless hearts grew grey and cold.

Did you not see the silence swell

Each time you thundered wrath and hell?

Oh dear Preacher, can you hear

The silence screaming in the rear?

The widow’s sigh, the orphan’s plea,

The man who kneeled, then tried to flee?

You saw him shake, you saw him fall—

But turned your face and blessed the wall.

You preached of love in sacred tones,

Yet buried hurt beneath the stones.

Oh dear Preacher, tell me true:

Did you forget you’re broken too?

Or did your robes become disguise

To hide the cracks behind your eyes?

The altar wasn’t made for kings,

But aching souls with tattered wings.

And yet you walk like thunder sent—

A prophet proud, a monument.

Still, I remember softest days,

When through your voice came brighter ways—

The Sunday light through colored glass,

A prayer that held the weightless mass

Of hope, not rules, of grace, not fear—

A fleeting hymn that drew me near.

But those are ghosts now, thin and gone,

Like twilight’s breath before the dawn.

Oh dear Preacher, hear this cry:

Not every soul was born to fly.

Some walk through storms with feet of clay,

Some pray with nothing left to say.

The ones you left outside the gate

Now build their altars out of hate.

And I—once one who knelt with trust—

Now walk with ashes, not with dust.

But if you’d cast aside your fame,

And step down humbled, stripped of name—

If you’d unlace your sacred shoes

And speak of all the times you lose—

Then maybe, just beneath the skin,

We’d see a soul that bleeds within.

And maybe grace would bloom again,

Between the cracks of “holy men.”

Oh dear Preacher, if you hear,

Let go the staff, draw yourself near.

The world is aching, not for fire,

But tenderness beneath the choir.

The throne you built is just a chair—

Come sit with us in plain despair.

Not to condemn, not to convert—

But simply hold what all hearts hurt.