A WELCOME SIGN ON A CLOSED WORLD

A WELCOME SIGN ON A CLOSED WORLD

A little sign hangs
upon a heavy fence.

Painted flowers bloom around it.
Bees dance in quiet circles.
One gentle word shines in white—

WELCOME.

Yet behind the smiling letters
stands cold steel,
locked gates,
and a world
that has forgotten
how to open.

How strange we have become.

We write welcome
where no one may enter.

We celebrate kindness
while tightening the chains.

We decorate the barrier
instead of removing it.

Perhaps the sign remembers
what we have forgotten.

Perhaps it whispers
to every passerby,

"This is not how it was meant to be."
For once there was another gate.

Outside its walls
stood the Son of God,

rejected,
despised,
numbered among the outcasts.

They closed the city to Him.
Yet from the Cross
He opened Heaven.

The world built a barrier.
God made a doorway.

The world declared,
"Keep out."

Christ answered,
"Come to Me."

So the little sign
keeps hanging there,

a quiet contradiction,
a small prophecy
nailed to a great fence.

Its flowers bloom
against iron.

Its welcome speaks
against fear.

Its beauty protests
against exclusion.

And every believer
who walks past
must decide
whether to leave the sign
where it hangs,
or become
the open door
that the sign
has been waiting for.

Until every fence
learns the language of mercy,
until every gate
remembers grace,
until every stranger
finds a home,

the Gospel will continue
to write one word

upon the hardest places
of the earth—
WELCOME.

Pastor Steven G. Lee
St. GMC Corps
July 1, 2026