I will give you wasp

This photograph, from an old derelict church along Suwannee Valley Road, now torn down, shows a poorly wrought painting of Jesus, with the words above in the banner scroll, "Come Unto Me", a reference from Matthew 11:28 where Jesus says, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me: for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls."
As if in a mocking manner, the dirt daubers had built a nest right over the face of Jesus. It spoke to me. In most of my spiritual life, what I have received was not rest, but wasps.
We were told this world is not our home, that we were to look for a heavenly one. Thus, by inference, anything here was of lesser value and worth. The things of this world were to be shunned, as sinful, as of the flesh, worldy, devilish.
Art, why that is idolatry, a graven image, putting something before God. Music and literature as well. If it did not fall under the narrow confines of the defined, it was to be shunned. We poked fun at the Amish and Mennonites who took this other worldliness to the extreme, but we autere Baptists and Methodists were equally to blame.
In the quest for the upper story, we learn not to appreciate the lower story in which we lived.
The fellow brothers and sisters we were called to love, when we fell out in disagreement over the color of the altar cloth, or the pew styles, we parted to form a church of the Shaker style pew, to our own liking, shunning those who remained in the pew of a lesser color.
We said that we loved God and our fellow men above ourselves, but in practice, we didn't. We loved our image. Our way. The highway was for the wanderers, the strangers, the blind, the halt, the ones who could not see our way.
Comfortable and proud in our Shaker style pews, we listened to the preacher of our own choosing, preach a sermon that spoke only to us. We could see the world out there, for we did not like stained glass, we took of our grape juice communion, for we dared not inbibe wine, we pulled all icons from our white walls, for that was idolatry, a graven image, we sang the honky tonk southern style, for the chant was boring, high churchy, and we could not get to the benediction soon enough, for how quickly the Olive Garden filled on Sundays with those fortunate to abide by the clock upon the back wall.
And so the sting of wasps was what we got.