for the past couple of days i have been tearing up and when alone, just crying. from the moment i looked at the pictures of the bodies of the naked and wounded children being layed out on the ground, the confused and tortured faces of the little boys and girls, the youths, carried out of the Russian school, i have been stunned and hurting. how could anyone do such a thing to children, to other people in a community? how could people stay and terrorize other human beings, for days, having killed and then continue to kill? children!! they were shot as they ran away. it’s as if a silent film sequence goes through my head of those pictures and then, all the personal evils i have witnessed in my own life, the terrible irreconcilable things that just never make sense no matter how you try to put it in a box. mental disease is often disjointed that way, and the headlines: the murders, drunk driving, adultery, terror nightly in this country, rape and families that hurt each other. the darkness that just defeats and pulls a shroud over everything sometimes. i just cry, and question.
so i miss sleep over it tonight, and i’ve cried and hurt over all this sin and evil. but don’t get me wrong or imagine that i am sweetly crying clean tears of never having been polluted by anger or fear or hatred myself. no, i am not looking out from some kind of forced religious perspective. earlier in the day, i was worried about how i was going to find a job that didn’t require dealing too much with the kind of people i usually tend to run into: the selfish, backstabbing, lazy, shallow people i’ve worked with in the past. i was dreading having to deal with people at all. i was trying to figure out how to jump the mote between the fiefdom of my angry heart and the safety of knowing and living in love. i was trying to figure out how to be able to let go and just find a job, to let go of trying to change the unholy worldliness i will no doubt encounter. but the television screams the world at me, it blares the images of evil at a maddening pace, showing me through movies and news and songs, how useless and worthless living in Christ must be– how following Him is like sticking my head in the sand to all the desperation all around… so why not just give up and be desperate too? why not just give up and pretend like everybody else?
oh, God i need Jesus. i need to run and be safe in him, to know him and listen to him. i sing for Jesus to draw me close. i fall on my knees, but not in some kind of religious fervor. i don’t need that. so i listen to his words, and ask the Holy Spirit’s help: “My command is this: Love each other. Greater love has no one but this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what i command…” i am stunned again, by the living and sharp word of God. a cavern opens up in me. i want to be forgiven for my lack of love.
and then i keep on reading from the fifteenth chapter of john’s gospel, and then the sixteenth chapter, like drinking from a fountain, and i hear Him speaking to me, “i have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. in this world you will have trouble. but take heart! i have overcome the world…” i hear him say truth, how the Father loved him, and his prayers for me, for all of us who believe. he wasn’t praying for the world. he told us they would hate us and persecute us, and kill us thinking they were doing good. he prayed for us. he lives in us even in these moments.
and so i have hope. i have Jesus. He draws me close to him, in the midst of the darkness of mid-morning, of the sin and depravity of the world, and he speaks to me, and the Holy Spirit comforts me. the tears subside and now i know that tomorrow i will get up and go about my day not wondering how to jump the mote between my heart and the safety of love, or how to convince myself to go out and find a job, and work for “the man” or “the machine” or whatever catch-phrase is used lately for the workplace, debt, and taxes. i will not give up on mattering and doing something that makes a difference. but the tears subside now because of this: the world will never think i matter, and i will never make a difference to it. i matter to the Lord. i will go again to my Jesus, to the source of forgiveness and love, and i will obey his command. i will seek out his love to me, and his words to me again, to be healed. i will avoid allowing the world to set up a fear-camp in my heart again. this will me my daily bread.
i pray for each of you who read this to not be offended by my sleepy writing style, and for each of you to listen to the Lord today as He comes to you to draw you to himself, for you to pay attention to him and let him cut into your heart. as i pray for all of us, i notice how easily we condemn ourselves before we ever get to the throne of grace. so, may the veil of separation be lifted for a while– may He draw us ever closer to him.
