broke
Do you ever have those days when you find yourself in such an inexpressible mood of ambiguous blah? Like, you don’t really feel bad: no one died, your not wallowing in iniquity, no one screamed at you and you managed to drive around town without totalling your car. But you just don’t feel good either. You just feel messed up. Like something is broken and you cant figure it out, cant even really find the words to express it other than…well, messed up.
Do you suppose that is something yelling from the inside that this world is broken? Things aren’t right, and not just in you, but in the world? I’m not a pessimist, and I’m not a cynic after 9 a.m., but I refuse to believe that this world is so happy. I don’t think the American dream of golden retrievers and boats really work; it’s not reality. I see events like Sierra Leon, Darfur, and Iraq and see turmoil with tears, broken lives, but never much healing or joy.
Why? What makes our soul ache like this? What robs men of peace and lies to them telling them that the pursuit of happiness and success is the most important thing when there are people dieing in mass genocide from 12 year old killers and rapists? Mothers kill their children, molestations, gruesome and macabre murder, abortion. What the hell is wrong with us?
Would I be so presumptuous to claim it as sin? Would I really be overstepping my bounds to say it is the depraved state of mankind, laced with evil, that rebuke and run from what is righteous? There is no other option, what else makes the world the way it is? Sin, and the sinners who commit them.
Tell me there aren’t days when your chest feels tight and you feel like crap and you cant figure it out, cant even talk about it because you cant understand it. And we walk about through our day “Hey John how are you?” “O, I’m doin just fine. How bout you Jack?” “Fine.”
BS we’re doin fine. We’re lost and don’t even know it; there is just some hunch in our chests that grows heavy every once and a while when we begin to think of morality and truth.
BS we’re doin fine. Because if we were we wouldn’t have a problem. Murder, rape, and every other evil thing one man can do to another wouldn’t occur. Peace would reign, joy would flow.
BS we’re doin fine. We’ve abandoned Jesus at the dinner table and have made love with the world in the next room. And it wasn’t a one night stand; we are still trying to make it work.
Pat Miles said,
June 21, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Thanks for writing, bro. I definitely feel your angst and can hear your passion coming out of your writing. I think about suffering and injustice a lot myself, and I still can’t understand how we can come up with such disgusting things to do and say to each other, how man can so degrade another for his own pleasure, or how so many can just sit back with a cup of coffee and let it happen (I, too, am guilty of this).
But, oh, for that day when all creation will cease its groaning and rejoice in full redemption! No more sin! That’s going to be sweet!
A few songs that I’ve purchased recently really strike that chord within me: “Light Gives Heat,” by Jars of Clay on their newest album “Good Monsters;” Derek Webb’s “This too Shall Be Made Right” on his newest “Ringing Bell;” and “Love Alone” on Caedmon’s Call’s older record, “Long Line of Leavers.” Anyway, check those out. There are plenty others, too.
Peace, brother.
-pat
cottonwoodwatson said,
June 21, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Thank you, Patty, for the affirmation.
“He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming quickly’ Amen Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.” (Revelation 22:20-21 NASB)
It will be sweet.