“Come gather round people wherever you roam, And admit that the waters around you have grown, And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone, If your time to you is worth saving, And you better stop swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, Oh the times they are a-changing” ~Bob Dylan
I had the amazing gift of spending the whole month of August relaxing, resting, and visiting long-missed friends and family after my Mission Year in Chicago. And in the few and far spaces between, I attempted to piece back together my life in ‘the real world’ with this big, wonderful, dirty mess of the last year of my life staring me in the face. And when I looked back at it, I realized how profoundly my perspective—the way I think, act, respond, judge— has changed (or is in the process of changing) in just one year. My world, the water in which I swim, has grown larger and choppier than I feel I can handle at times. I have come to see so much hurt and unfairness that I don’t really know what to do with it. I wonder often, has there always been this much hurt in the world or have times really changed that much? Jesus did say it himself, “The poor will always be among us.” I’ve found myself wondering, “Is it really worth it to try to change anything? Can we really bring about POSITIVE change?”
When I get into these moods, when I see the world as a glass that is barely half empty, I tend to see everything extremely large and looming. SOCIAL INJUSTICE. RACISM. CLASSISM. POVERTY. HUNGER. VIOLENCE. CORRUPTION. HATRED. INDIFFERENCE. How on Earth can we begin to create Heaven on Earth as Jesus taught us to pray for in the Lord’s Prayer when we are up against these giants?
A week or so ago I got caught up in one of these moments and just broke down. I began crying, thinking of it all. Where is God? Where is this Good God that I want to hold fast to in all this? As I settled down a bit, I took a moment and spoke to God, telling him that I would give Him the next five minutes. I would meditate on Him and in that time I asked that He give me some sort of reprieve, some sort of sign that everything is OK, He is there and is working it out to make the world a better place like He’s supposed to (I don’t know how doctrinally or theologically sound this is, but hey, I gotta be real with Him). I was so serious I even set a timer. Within the first 30 seconds, I was balling. It escalated and utterly uncontrollable sobs racked my body for the next 5 minutes. Then DING, the timer went off. “What? That’s it?” I thought. No God, no Good God would leave me hanging like that! I felt frustrated, abandoned. And then it hit me. That is how God feels. He is crying out there, balling, heart-broken and wrecked at the thought of us down here suffering, hurting, dying, hating. I know it. In that moment I realized the very act of crying out for the woes of this world was just a glimpse, a small moment of divine intimacy with God above. He was revealing to me His heart for the hurting.
I am realizing, yes, as long as I continue to follow the path Jesus has called us to, these waters of injustice will continue to be large and the waves will keep coming, but I want to stay in this place of struggle as long as I need to, to continue to know God’s heart. I will try not to fight it, try not to swim against it to retreat to the comfortable place away from the pain, but I hope that along the way He will give me the strength and guidance to work towards change. And that, while I am drenched to the bone in this struggle, Hope will come. Let us all pray that Hope will come.
