the aching
These are difficult days. Understatement.
Some days I think they are the most difficult days I've ever had in my life. Hyperbole?
I wonder if I'm up to it. If my mettle will hold. Every fiber in my body aches. I kept pushing through the pain, until today when it stopped me. I sat on the couch and was unable to move. I couldn't even imagine getting up. When I finally moved, it was slowly, with the greatest effort.
As S. prayed over me last night, his hand on my head -- He petitioned God to give me deliverance. He asked God to show me how to trust His promises, No Matter How It Looks. That returns to me again and again -- the challenge to see beyond the circumstances. I must look through them like a smokescreen and see what is on the other side. I remind myself again and again not to care what it looks like, to not cave in. I will call those things which are not as if they are.
It is apt that those words were prayed last night, as my father called me today with more bad news. Everyday this saga gets worse. The brutality increases. I do not have the physical strength to hold back the barbarism that has invaded.
So, I will fight in the spirit instead. It is all I have. It is the place where I am as weak as I am in body, but where He is strong. I cried out to God, and He heard my desperate pleas. I sat on the couch and prayed, as the tears rolled down my face. I am learning what it means to trust Him, to have the kind of faith that will move this mountain. Justice belongs to Him. He alone can deliver us out of this snare that has been set by the wicked. The people who are set against us have declared war on almighty God, they just don't know it yet. The irony is that they claim to be Christians. Well, that should be ironic. These days, it's to be expected. How sad. I won't even begin to voice my disgust at the latest incident in which a televangelist shot his mouth off like a cretin. It's so revoltingly predictable as to hardly be worthy of mention.
I praise God that I'm broken, that I don't sit in lofty places, that I'm not blessed and comfortable. It has made me humble. It has taught me never to judge. It is perfecting His strength through my weakness. If I had the world at my command, if I was smug, self-satisfied, and flush, would I see Him the way that I do? I can rejoice that if I ever become successful, safe, and financially self-sufficient, I will remember who brought me up out of ruin, and I will not be callous and cold. No matter how much money I have, I want to always remember my poverty of the spirit. I want to always know my state of need before God, my unrighteousness, my flawed human heart.
I want to have more money in the future, so I can give more of it away. I would like to spend less time worrying about money, and more time helping people. When I read about what is going on in our country and all over the world, I wish I was a billionaire. I never cared much about money when I was little, because I didn't know what it could do. I only wanted to be an artist in a Paris garret. I was a punk, a poet, a romantic bohemian. I wasn't prepared for the real world. I didn't know the depths of its sorrows, nor how it chews up the poor and spits them out. I didn't know I'd find myself a victim of the lack of money. I didn't know I'd be overeducated and underpaid. I didn't know I'd become too ill to work, and need to navigate the governmental systems.
I hardly have any money in the bank, but I hope that a little girl in The Gambia is doing better because my father and I are sponsoring her. I have her picture on my refrigerator. She's not smiling. I hope she smiles sometimes now. I hope that now at least she knows that someone cares about what happens to her and her family. I donated to the Niger famine crisis through two different organizations. I feel like it's a drop of water going into an empty bucket, not enough to even give someone who is thristy a mouthful to drink; I can only hope that combined with other drops of water, it will shower the dry and weary land, and feed the children that suffer so. I don't mention this to pat myself on the back and to assuage white liberal guilt, I write about it because I realize that I am poor and want to give it all away, and that there are rich people like the televangelists who just keep lining their coffers with monies wrested from those they dupe. I want to see them help someone for once, and then, let them talk. Their day of judgment will come. I know one thing, on Judgment Day I'd rather be a repented killer, than be a Fallwell, a Robertson, a Swaggart, or any of the hundreds of others who are so boldly self-righteous.
It reminds me of this passage in the Bible:
The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
Luke 18: 9-14
9 Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ 13 And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Just thinking about that unknown humble man brings tears to my eyes. Oh, that we would all be so broken. Dear God, that is my prayer, that I would be ever broken before you.
Some days I think they are the most difficult days I've ever had in my life. Hyperbole?
I wonder if I'm up to it. If my mettle will hold. Every fiber in my body aches. I kept pushing through the pain, until today when it stopped me. I sat on the couch and was unable to move. I couldn't even imagine getting up. When I finally moved, it was slowly, with the greatest effort.
As S. prayed over me last night, his hand on my head -- He petitioned God to give me deliverance. He asked God to show me how to trust His promises, No Matter How It Looks. That returns to me again and again -- the challenge to see beyond the circumstances. I must look through them like a smokescreen and see what is on the other side. I remind myself again and again not to care what it looks like, to not cave in. I will call those things which are not as if they are.
It is apt that those words were prayed last night, as my father called me today with more bad news. Everyday this saga gets worse. The brutality increases. I do not have the physical strength to hold back the barbarism that has invaded.
So, I will fight in the spirit instead. It is all I have. It is the place where I am as weak as I am in body, but where He is strong. I cried out to God, and He heard my desperate pleas. I sat on the couch and prayed, as the tears rolled down my face. I am learning what it means to trust Him, to have the kind of faith that will move this mountain. Justice belongs to Him. He alone can deliver us out of this snare that has been set by the wicked. The people who are set against us have declared war on almighty God, they just don't know it yet. The irony is that they claim to be Christians. Well, that should be ironic. These days, it's to be expected. How sad. I won't even begin to voice my disgust at the latest incident in which a televangelist shot his mouth off like a cretin. It's so revoltingly predictable as to hardly be worthy of mention.
I praise God that I'm broken, that I don't sit in lofty places, that I'm not blessed and comfortable. It has made me humble. It has taught me never to judge. It is perfecting His strength through my weakness. If I had the world at my command, if I was smug, self-satisfied, and flush, would I see Him the way that I do? I can rejoice that if I ever become successful, safe, and financially self-sufficient, I will remember who brought me up out of ruin, and I will not be callous and cold. No matter how much money I have, I want to always remember my poverty of the spirit. I want to always know my state of need before God, my unrighteousness, my flawed human heart.
I want to have more money in the future, so I can give more of it away. I would like to spend less time worrying about money, and more time helping people. When I read about what is going on in our country and all over the world, I wish I was a billionaire. I never cared much about money when I was little, because I didn't know what it could do. I only wanted to be an artist in a Paris garret. I was a punk, a poet, a romantic bohemian. I wasn't prepared for the real world. I didn't know the depths of its sorrows, nor how it chews up the poor and spits them out. I didn't know I'd find myself a victim of the lack of money. I didn't know I'd be overeducated and underpaid. I didn't know I'd become too ill to work, and need to navigate the governmental systems.
I hardly have any money in the bank, but I hope that a little girl in The Gambia is doing better because my father and I are sponsoring her. I have her picture on my refrigerator. She's not smiling. I hope she smiles sometimes now. I hope that now at least she knows that someone cares about what happens to her and her family. I donated to the Niger famine crisis through two different organizations. I feel like it's a drop of water going into an empty bucket, not enough to even give someone who is thristy a mouthful to drink; I can only hope that combined with other drops of water, it will shower the dry and weary land, and feed the children that suffer so. I don't mention this to pat myself on the back and to assuage white liberal guilt, I write about it because I realize that I am poor and want to give it all away, and that there are rich people like the televangelists who just keep lining their coffers with monies wrested from those they dupe. I want to see them help someone for once, and then, let them talk. Their day of judgment will come. I know one thing, on Judgment Day I'd rather be a repented killer, than be a Fallwell, a Robertson, a Swaggart, or any of the hundreds of others who are so boldly self-righteous.
It reminds me of this passage in the Bible:
The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
Luke 18: 9-14
9 Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ 13 And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Just thinking about that unknown humble man brings tears to my eyes. Oh, that we would all be so broken. Dear God, that is my prayer, that I would be ever broken before you.
posted by scribe at 8/24/2005
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