A Life Worth Living

I would like to buy three dollars' worth of God, please.
Not enough to explode my soul,
or disturb my sleep,
but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk,
or a snooze in the sunshine.
I don't want enough of Him to make me love a black man
or pick beets with a migrant.
I want ecstasy,
not transformation.
I want the warmth of the womb,
not a new birth.
I want about a pound of the eternal
in a paper sack.
I would like to buy three dollars' worth of God, please.

- Wilbur Reese -

[Thanks to an article by Valerie Phillips, entitled A Pound of the Eternal in a Paper Sack, found in the September 22 issue of the Adventist Review.]