how can we ever learn to be intimate with another if we are not first intimately aware of God?

i am a very easily confused person. other people confuse me, reality confuses me, and most of all i confuse myself. Something like, "What i don't want to do, i do; and what i do want to do, i don't do."

At any rate, i keep learning that living life is much less easy than it seems. As a Christian, i find it extremely difficult to come to terms with the conditions in which other Christians around the world live. They live in poverty, they fight constant battles against AIDS and other devastating physical illnesses, they live in constant fear of being killed. They are in no way immune to the tragedies the world offers. This is something i can't understand or fathom or sympathize with. In fact, it bothers me to such an extent that i often feel guilty for living a life that's so easy. i've alluded to my tendency to ask "Why?" about so many things. But quite recently, i have begun to realize that my life as a Christian in the U.S. is not easy. It is quite different from the life of a Rwandan Christian or a Chinese Christian, but not necessarily easier. i've often heard Christians from Mexico and other countries talk about how they pray for us because they realize how hard it is to walk with our God in the culture that surrounds us, but it hasn't really clicked till just now why they are so concerned.

Satan is not very blatant in a lot of ways in Western culture. It's not like we can very often see angelic and demonic forces evident in our day to day lives. You know, no exorcisms in the town village. No, it's a lot more complicated and covert. Constant bombardment with media is a nice tool for him. Music, movies, news, porn, etc, etc. i mean, some of it seems pretty bad right from the outset, but honestly the consequences aren't like having a demonic possession. At least not immediately. But a lot of it doesn't even seem like it's bad to begin with. It gets disguised with humor and intellectualism and emotional well-being and the like. The thing is, all of this bombardment eventually just throws up a wall of enmity between me, and you, and God. When the world is constantly communicating to us, and when we constantly communicate with the world, when do we have time for God? What's created is a type of immorality that perhaps is different than what you might find in other places. No better and no worse, just different. And that immorality, whether sexual or intellectual or spiritual or what have you, causes a pain that goes just as deep as the pain experienced by people around this world. And that is where the whole world is brought to its knees by sin. It matters not whether you make $5 million a year and live in Beverly Hills or if you live in a cardboard box in South Africa. We all have this "problem of pain" as C.S. Lewis put it.

So that brings me back to my own life. This past weekend involved a lot of what some people would call "soul-searching." Basically just looking at my life and the way i live and how i interact with people and the God who created us. One of the many things i've realized is that for some reason i'm at a place where God just wants me to realize the pain that others experience. And He's been trying to show this to me for 20 years now. Having 7 year old friends talk about their parents divorcing while mine were happily married. Having a friend who came to such a point in their life that they tried to commit suicide. Seeing family torn apart by a husband's selfishness. Having a friend go through a terrible boating accident before our senior year. Having another friend diagnosed with cancer. Knowing that my own parents have had to go through what no parent should have to go through. i could go on for pages about what i now see as God's way of trying to show me that my life is not my own. Trying to show me that He did not create me and me only. Trying to show me that He loves everyone enough to die for them. And so should i.

It all culminated this weekend when another dear friend of mine shared a part of their life that is full of more pain than i can even fathom. A kind of pain that no person should have to bear and which no one would if sin had not entered the world. As i was sitting there listening to a story of life that had been invaded by trauma, it was like all the pain of the people i've interacted with my whole life became suddenly real to me. It wasn't just something i knew in my head, it was something i felt in my heart and in my gut. It was a realization that sin has so messed up this world that people will do anything to hurt other people; that sin makes ugly what was meant to be so beautiful; that we can't escape it. But then my friend talked about something that just floored me. Healing. How in the midst of all of this pain could there be healing of any kind? How can there ever be healing from a realization that your parents don't love each other, or maybe even you, anymore? How can there be healing from a son or daughter's death?

There is healing because God's love for us is beyond all comprehension. There is nothing you can do and nothing i can do and nothing anyone or anything in all the universe can do that would separate us from the love of Christ. He who willingly gave His own life to save us from the sin that causes such pain offers healing that i would never endeavor to describe with words. Pain is too deep to be handled by ourselves. God, our Helper, the Great Physician, He is offering healing even now...

"The thought of my suffering and homelessness
is bitter beyond words.
I will never forget this awful time,
as I grieve over my loss.
Yet I still dare to hope
when I remember this:

The faithful love of the Lord never ends!
His mercies never cease.
Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning."

Lamentations 3:19-23