Tragedy

Love. We all want it; we all have it in some degree, but we still want more. Living downtown has taught me this of us. We long to be cared for, mostly because we see ourselves as the greatest thing the world has yet to see.

I was talking with a homeless man about another homeless man. The latter had come through the church a few times but never stuck and gave me the chills. When I asked this particular homeless guy about him he said, “O, man he’s crazy.” Which struck me funny.

Another man, arguably in the same situation mentally calling another man crazy, is this irony? Or is this man so diluted that even the others in his situation don’t want to be around him.

Yet my mind kept spinning, I imagined a story and it went like this:

A couple walked down a snow packed sidewalk. They’d just come from a party in some darker side of town. The booze had been flowing and the crack had been lined so neatly.

The inebriated couple turns the corner and headed toward a clunker car. The light of the street lamp reveals the woman to be heavily pregnant.

A few weeks later she gives birth to a small baby boy. He’s quickly taken away by the S.R.S. to be placed in better living conditions. The mother could’ve cared less where he went she was too bent over in pain from the withdrawals of being without her precious substances for the time it took to be in labor.

The boy is given to his grandma, an elderly woman whose fragility is only kept whole by the strength of her love.

At the age of five the boy’s grandma dies. He is once again handed over to the system to see what ought to be done with him. Foster home after foster home turns him away because, “He’s just too much.”

When he’s 11 he’s standing in a church in an ill-fitting suit looking into a casket with some tiny meth addict inside it. His mom. He’d always known who she was, but she was never around. They’d found her in the basement of a meth house, the needle still between her toes.

By the age of 14 he’d been arrested twice and by that same age he’d tried his first hit of meth.

Once he hit the ‘responsible’ age of 18 he’s living on the streets with a mind fried beyond aid…

And now, another homeless man is calling him crazy.

All this story in an instant; my mind trying to answer the question of how someone ended up like this. The lack of love, the absence of parents, compounded onto the unwanted crack-baby born. It’s a sad story, all tragedy and no comedy.

Love. We all want it. Yet a redeeming love, a love that transcends to such depths as this, is only found in Jesus. For no man or woman or child or mother or father could love one to salvation, only Jesus can.

Innocent

“I am a whore I do confess, I put you on just like a wedding dress and run down the isle. I’m a prodigal with no way home I put you on just like a ring of gold and I run down the isle to you. So could you love this bastard child, though I don’t trust you to provide?” ~Derek Webb

Yes.

Writers write of the ‘loss of innocence.’ Singers sing of it. People speak of it to their friends. But we’ve never been innocent.

If we believe Scripture to be true and foundational, there was never a time in our lives when we were pure, when we were right, when we were good (Isa 64:6; Rom 3:9-18). We’ve always been deserving of hell.

I know, this is a happy Monday post, right?

But we have hope, that tiny yet beautiful word, hope. We can be expectant of our Savior to be enough. Clinging to this hope. We hope on hope that our hope will not be put to shame.

It’s faith really, faith in the unseen. For how can we hope in what we see? How can we have faith in the things we know break or fail?

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

An American's America

Reading by the candlelight, The Civil Wars playing in the background, sipping on some apple cider by all accounts relaxing. In and of itself is nothing to write home about or to blog about, but when compared to what the rest of the world gets, the ability to relax, to completely chill is profound.

But we whine about our small plights, or poor selves. Yet ironically enough the day after we give thanks for all we have we forego all sleep to buy more stuff. Who are we? What are we? A contradictory statement: having everything but needing more.

As Americans we’re free, right? Yet we’re still enslaved to stuff, and not our stuff, we’re enslaved to other people’s stuff. We want what they have. We’re a country of adulterous idolaters. Claiming to love One yet all the while going to bed with anything else.

What freedom is there in our society? The reply might be, “Freedom to do what we want,” freedom to be ruled by our animal self and all the longings of what we see? That’s not freedom. We’re still enslaved the difference is we just ‘like’ our master.

Don’t get me wrong I love my country, I’ve seen the world and I love living here. But a hundred years ago men worked to bring home the necessities and when they had no money they went without. It appears as though we’ve lost our reason (and by ‘reason’ I mean sense, ability to think clearly).

Self-satisfaction is the god, which rules our hearts. Self-appreciation is the worship song we sing. Self-worth is the highest possible virtue…

But we won’t change that. The master whipping our backs and sinking us into debt is what we call ‘freedom’ but freedom also means no hindrance of restraint, but we’re restrained by what we see in other’s hands, we’re restrained by the debt-collector. We’re locked up nicely in our plush cells – but their cell is nicer.

Stuff is nice, but if we have not a healthy perspective on stuff, stuff will kill us.

Bankruptcy, riots, and more because, “I want what they have, now.”