[Intro - acoustic strum, brushed snare, harmonica fill, vocal entering conversational]
I had a chart on my bedroom wall
When I was sixteen
I had the centuries color-coded
And I knew the order of the beasts

[Verse 1 - conversational, autobiographical inventory, the stuff she owned]
I had *The Late Great Planet Earth* in paperback
I had the cover dog-eared from re-reading
I had *There's a New World Coming*
With the underlining in green and yellow
I had the cassette tapes from the prophecy conference
I had the flannelgraph beasts from Sunday school
Bear and leopard and lion with wings
And the little horn with the eyes
I had the dates marked on the kitchen calendar
And the cross-referenced study Bible
With the columns down the side
And the rapture in red ink

[Pre-Chorus - tension, minor color, organ entering]
And I waited for the trumpet
And I waited for the catching-up
And I waited for the seven years
And I waited for the antichrist
And I read the news with a highlighter
And every headline was the sign

[Chorus - warm anthem lift with melancholic undertow, harmonica swell]
The chart on the wall
The chart on the wall
Color-coded centuries and a date that kept moving
The chart on the wall
The chart on the wall
Seventy weeks split across two thousand years
And the rapture in red ink waiting to land

[Verse 2 - the failed-dates catalog, slightly sardonic, still autobiographical]
It was supposed to happen in eighty-eight
Someone wrote a book with eighty-eight reasons
Then it was supposed to happen in ninety-three
Then it was the millennium turnover, the Y2K rapture
Then the blood moons, the four lunar eclipses
Then the Jubilee year somebody calculated
Then the Israel restoration, then the Temple Mount stones
Then the next horizon, then the next horizon, then the next horizon
And the chart on the wall kept slipping
Like a calendar that wouldn't sit still

[Pre-Chorus]
And I waited for the trumpet
And I waited for the catching-up
And I started to wonder if the trumpet was a metaphor
And I started to wonder if the catching-up was already done
And the chart on the wall got smaller every year
Until I couldn't read the colors anymore

[Chorus]
The chart on the wall
The chart on the wall
Color-coded centuries and a date that kept moving
The chart on the wall
The chart on the wall
Seventy weeks split across two thousand years
And the rapture in red ink waiting to land

[Verse 3 - the turn, vocal closer, the chart literally falls]
One day the chart slipped off the wall
It just fell
I didn't take it down
I just stopped putting it back up
And the wall was bare
And in the bareness I saw what I had been missing
The Anointed One was cut off
In the middle of the week
Not two thousand years later
The cross was the middle
The cross was the middle of one history
The cross was the chart
And the wall stayed bare

[Bridge - sparse, drums dropping, vocal close, harmonica solo]
Not seven dispensations stacked like floors
Not the seventy weeks split across two millennia
Not the church a parenthesis in a bigger plan
One history
One Author
One cross at the middle
And the Author is writing toward His own face
And the chart came down
And the wall is enough

[Final Chorus - opening up, warm vocal harmonies, the resolution]
The chart on the wall
The chart on the wall
Came down when the cross took its place
The chart on the wall
The chart on the wall
The cross was the middle the whole time
And the Author is writing toward His face
And the rapture in red ink was always just the cross
Always just the cross

[Outro - acoustic strum settling, harmonica trailing, vocal soft]
The chart came down
The chart came down
The cross was the middle
The cross was the middle
The chart came down