You can lay out the feast for them, friend,
Preparing it with great care and excitement,
Thrilled to be serving and to be giving them
Beautiful things.
But before you do this, please understand
What the people of this world are like.
Many of them—
Even at church, of all places!—
Are so thoughtless
That they’ll think nothing of it to
Ignore your invitation altogether
If they don’t find it desirable.
It will not occur to them that a fellow human
Has reached out in good faith,
And ought to be replied to in like fashion,
With gracious gratitude.
And it has always been thus,
For this is what most people are like,
And the Golden Rule makes
No sense to their worldly minds.
So when you put yourself out there,
You need to keep this in mind,
Lest you assume without reason
That the problem here lies with you,
And not with the quality of the humans
You are trying to serve.
Be happy with what you get,
And let the blame be rightly placed
For what you don’t.
