A Prayer: 6/23/08

I wrote this after reading a section of Shane Claiborne's "The Irresistable Revolution," where he describes his trip to Iraq as a peacemaker. Specifically, his visit to a children's hospital where he witnessed a young girl, horribly marred, rocking back and forth repeating "What did I ever do to America?" After this incident, he spoke with a doctor who said sadly, "Violence is for those who have lost their imagination. Has your country lost its imagination?"

I had to put the book down. I was crying. This is my heart's response.

Lord, it has to end. The violence, the war, the injustice, the aloneness, the terror...
it has to end! And while I want the satisfaction of feeling that I'm standing at your door, pounding and screaming for you to come rescue us, I don't get it. Instead I find you waiting for me on the porch, hands simply at your sides, saying, "I know. What are you going to do about it?"
And I stand here, dumbly, and then sink to my knees, crying, "I don't know! God, I don't know...! I just can't stand it anymore."
But you, you stand there and you look at me and I know I'm the problem.
But I know I'll never be enough.
Oh God, help us. Help us! It has to end.

It's not enough that God loves us. It's not enough that he finds us beautiful and special.
He loves them.
Theyare beautiful and special, and that is the reality, no matter who our "they" may be.

...but I need my prayers to change. Change from "God, when will they understand" to "God, help us to understand." Because they are both the oppressed and the oppressors, the war victims and the warmongers. And I am bound up in both of them.
I have sinned against so many. The vastness is just beginning to sink in. I ache for the sin in me, for the wrong I've done in passivity, entitlement, self-centeredness, and greed. I am so quick to seek happiness for me and mine that I idly allow others to be crushed in labor until my purchase profits their crushing Big Foot.
God, I need forgiveness, and with it I know repentance is not an option but a requirement. But I wonder about tripping over my humanity. God, I wonder about my frailty and my inability to follow through.
To follow You.

And God repeated, for the billionth time, "I factored failure into the equation long before you ever did, and it still equals out that I love you. Besides, it's a journey we're on together."

And photos faded in and out on my computer screen saver, most of them containing faces from Rising Hope.
The Holy Spirit whispered, "Aren't they worth it?"

My oh-so-timid heart whispered, "Yes."

God, I don't know where to begin, but, I'm beginning. I'm naked--no pledges to hold before me or promises to cover me. I can't keep a single one. But God, this life is worth so much more of me and I don't know where that more of me is. Please awaken it, sustain it. Help me help it to grow. Times like this I get so overwhelmed with passion...I want to hop planes to Iraq, take years off of school. But what do you want me to do? (And the questions in my heart begin to surface, breaking the flow.)And Scripture whispers to my heart, calming it, saying "Behold, I am with you always..."

Another piece of my Self broke away and blew into the dark room. I get the feeling it floated all the way to the stars, and maybe it glimmers there, now free to be a part of something bigger than little old me.

I think when you lose yourself it's easier to breathe. When you lose yourself, the whole world breathes with you.