The New Land
A hundred years ago this year my grandpa packed it in,
He left the mists of Scotland and the job which he was in;
His traveling days were over selling office-tools and such;
Economy was broken, future did not hold too much.In Canada accounting work allowed him to move on,
Raise up a clutch of children; when economy went wrong,
He joined the many others seeking work by pounding streets;
Lived away, and sent his money home, to let his family eat.Integrity got tested, so he lost his job one day;
Came home to live in Winnipeg, to find another way;
Not sure what happened, how they lived, but somehow they got by;
He lived another decade, ’till his time arrived to die.Dad told me ’bout his spirit – it got crushed along the way –
The system was not working where folks work to earn their pay;
He didn't have his papers, made it hard when he got fired –
The cost of high integrity comes home when getting hired.Dad said, "Go get your ticket, son – don't work within the swirl,
At least you have a job to do to feed your boy and girl";
That's fine and good – what happens if our ticket then expires,
And cost of our integrity means we'll know more be hired?It's not just macro picture or just micro which we face,
But interface of both those parts, for life is interlaced;
If church is to put meaning in this world we're living in,
It must speak to integrity, but also social sin.The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but of heaven;
The word we speak into our time as salt, and light, and leaven,
Addresses not just water as it pours out from the tap,
But shutting off the faucet – larger pictures such as that.What happens when there's no more place for us to start again?
When frontier life has settled down where we can ease our pain?
Like Christopher Columbus we peer out beyond the Sea
And place our hopes in rocket ships – for that's our fantasy.navigation