A physician prepared his instruction
Anatomy it would be
With hands on experience
And detail for all to see.
He began by building a model
Proportioned in every part
With arms and legs and fingers
And bone and nose and heart.
He made his model big
Twice that of a regular man
He wished his students to see
The body’s consummate plan.
But then he took a saw
And cut it all apart
Hundreds of funny pieces
And that was just the start.
He purchased a thousand magnets
To hold the pieces in place
He glued and glued and pasted
Here and there as the case.
When each part had a magnet
Where each magnet ought to be
He surveyed all his work
And thought all would agree.
This was a great invention
None like it was ever seen
Hundreds of funny pieces
Nice and neat and clean.
After all, it was quite easy
To tear a body apart
But to put it back together
Now where would each one start.
He imagined in himself
Some would take the heart
And begin to the build the body
But would miss some vital part.
Others may take a toe
And find it wondrous fun
To build the body upwards
Reaching to the sun.
He thought about the insight
He would gain into each one
As he observed where they started
And what was left when done.
The first day of class began
He brought out first the box
And dumped the pieces on the floor
One thought it was an ox.
But as they began to work
Something appeared quite wrong
The magnets were all backwards
Their repelling strength was strong.
One student picked up the toe
Another took the foot
But try as they might
You never saw such a sight
The toe and the foot wouldn’t stick.
Another tried the head
But could not get the ear
To stick to the place
Where the ear has its base
He stuck it to the teeth.
The heart stuck fast to the brain
But repelled like crazy the vein.
And the tongue to the eye
Said “hi.”
By now all the students were working
Giving effort to the cause
They retrieved from somewhere tape
And bandages and gauze.
But even these did not help them
The hand rejected the arm
And though bandaged tightly together
There was no connecting charm.
The experiment made quite a story
A lesson never forgot
To hold a body together
Takes more than tape and cloth.
There must be some connectivity
A relationship we must see
Each attached to another
And connected properly.
The church is like that body
With many scattered parts
Each with a function
Not everyone’s the heart.
But if there is repulsion,
Envy, discord, strife;
We cannot fit together,
So much for body life.
A Christian poem by: Tim Binder — December 31, 2008