we will run this race for the least of these.

Fight injustice. Help heal a broken people. Give to Haiti.

2.01.10

"stood on the edge, tied to the noose, oh you came along and you cut me loose."

It has occurred to me--not necessarily just now, but strongly just now--that where i and i'd wager you and most everyone else gets it wrong at times is in our pursuit and almost quenchless thirst for feelings that we have defined and expectations our fancies have created. One of the dangers of being emotional beings is that we have a tendency to ascribe to the fulfillment of those emotions a place of ending and closure when emotions are at their foundation caused by people and events and our interactions within and between the two. They are reactions to reality, if you will. And yet we can put so much of ourselves into those reactions that we end up forgetting why we feel them in the first place.

One of the saddest things i see in the world is the falling apart of relationships. Friendships. Brothers and Sisters. Marriages. People--when they see an end game of self-defined emotional well-being--are willing to give up even the people they love if those people are not providing the feelings they desire, or perhaps not providing them fast enough, or maybe too fast, or not often enough. The problem is that when you create this state of feeling in which you want to dwell, and when you place that state above the people you hope help bring you there, your whole plan (and my whole plan) will inevitably fail. And then we blame the failure on the people we love.

For some reason, we have come to view emotions in a very static nature. We tend to automatically assume that because what we feel now is not the same as what we felt yesterday or when we first met, or when we were on our honeymoon, or when we used to go to the pool everyday during the summer, or when we were all younger, that what we feel now is not as good. To put it really, really simply, feelings change. They are kinetic. They don't disappear or evaporate, but they are just edited by life happening, and by people growing up or dying or being born. You and i can feel those emotions and become depressed and despondent because they don't meet our expectations, but here's the thing, our expectations are always, always, always far below what God wants for us. So inferior. Maybe you don't feel like a fuzzy little bear when you're with your girlfriend now. Maybe it's not always fun. But dear God, is that enough reason to throw it away? You see, your feelings have changed, and if infatuation was your end goal, you'll be going through girlfriends and wives for the rest of your life. But infatuation is nothing at all compared to the Love that God designed for you. The Love that knows forgiveness; the Love that is patient and kind; the Love that is selfless and brave.

So what importance will you and i place on feelings and emotions? The foundational issue that decides the answer to that question is how you view what glances back at you in the mirror. For this sin and all other sin starts with you and i placing ourselves first. Before people; before God. If the way you feel is more important than people, then you are in effect saying you are more important than people. That is the reason relationships fail. Magic isn't needed to repair them, only stepping down from that gaudy little throne you made for yourself and remembering that God has been and will continue to be on His majestic throne for all eternity. And by remembering that He said to love others as yourself. If only you and i would decrease so very much so that we could actually see what God wants for us. Sometimes my selfish, emotional obesity clouds my vision, but even if i have blinded myself to the people i love and to Jesus who loved me first, they are still there. Most importantly He is always there, waiting to show me grace. To show us Grace.

we are alive in the Mystery.

God hurts for Haiti. He hurts for the people of that broken country more than all the hurt the entire human population could ever express. Do i know all the reasons why He allowed this catastrophe to happen? No, how could i? One thing i do know is that He is able to do exceedingly beyond all we could ask or imagine. The same Power that rescued my heart from darkness can surely rescue that nation from despair. And His Love still reigns, even in the midst of tragedy. He can turn a nation dedicated to darkness into a nation filled with that very Love.

During this whole time of me trying to reconcile the images i see of the earthquake and it's devastation of people God created with that very God, Isaiah 30 has been so pivotal in helping me grasp the perfect Love of God. Israel had turned away from God much in the same way Haiti has historically, and God had dealt with their sin. Yet He never once gave up on them. These verses offer an astounding picture of justice, of forgiveness, and of a Savior who has paid the ultimate price to offer both.

Therefore, this is what the Holy One of Israel says:
"Because you have rejected this message,
relied on oppression
and depended on deceit,

this sin will become for you
like a high wall, cracked and bulging,
that collapses suddenly, in an instant.

It will break in pieces like pottery,
shattered so mercilessly
that among its pieces not a fragment will be found
for taking coals from a hearth
or scooping water out of a cistern."

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says:
"In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength,
but you would have none of it.

You said, 'No, we will flee on horses.'
Therefore you will flee!
You said, 'We will ride off on swift horses.'
Therefore your pursuers will be swift!

A thousand will flee
at the threat of one;
at the threat of five
you will all flee away,
till you are left
like a flagstaff on a mountaintop,
like a banner on a hill."

Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you;
he rises to show you compassion.
For the LORD is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!

O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." Then you will defile your idols overlaid with silver and your images covered with gold; you will throw them away like a menstrual cloth and say to them, "Away with you!"

He will also send you rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the food that comes from the land will be rich and plentiful. In that day your cattle will graze in broad meadows. The oxen and donkeys that work the soil will eat fodder and mash, spread out with fork and shovel. In the day of great slaughter, when the towers fall, streams of water will flow on every high mountain and every lofty hill. The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the LORD binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.

Isaiah 30:12-26

"the leprosy of unreality"

For some reason, one that is completely unknown to me, i have a tendency to recall--from a bank of about five or ten--short, unrelated passages from an assortment of unrelated books that i've read in my lifetime, and i recall them quite often. If you are the type of person that has recurring dreams, i think this is somewhat similar, because although i recall these words quite often, i have not been able to establish any connection with events or thought patterns that tip me off as to when i'll think of them again. It's not like favorite quotes that you would put on your facebook profile, because i have those, and they are different than these. Again, the closest comparison i can at the moment think of is that between these "quotes", if you will, and a dream which occurs throughout your life, but for which you have no real explanation or even ability to describe. They are similar in that they occur at seemingly random times, and, more expressively, they seem to me to be pictorial rather than paragraphical. In other words, it's as if i randomly see words on a page for which i retain a memory of reading and which carry with them a definite meaning, but i cannot always know the "quote" verbatim as it existed from the author's pen and as i read it originally.

This is all very confusing and annoying and boring to you, i know, but i'm getting somewhere. All of that (the previous paragraph) to say that there is one of those "quotes" which comes up most often and which has been the cause of the most thought, by far. i read this book, if my mind serves me correctly, in the seventh grade, and when i came across this quote i was struck very vividly by it, and continued to be for sometime. And by this i mean that it was something i struggled with intellectually as an idea with which i wasn't quite sure i agreed. But when the book was over, (this book being A Separate Peace, by John Knowles), i forgot, or forced myself to forget, this idea, and quote, altogether. But, like a recurring dream, it has never failed to visit me at random times since the seventh grade, and since it did so again this evening, i wanted to share it with you. It still causes me to think, and although i'm not quite certain about the superlative or dogmatic nature of its message, i will say that i've come to believe there is at least a certain amount of truth in it. i now give it to you as food for thought, albeit an out-of-context thought if you haven't read the book, yet thought still beneficial as i see it:

"It was only long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak."