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My body goes numb when all I want is to feel the pain she feels. Did I get in the way or just not see the way things are? For my selfishness, I’m sorry, for my closed mindedness, I’m ashamed. You know the feeling you get when you watch someone helpless get humiliated, left alone to pick up their tattered clothing and trampled soul? I put my feet in the shoes of another man. I answered your questions just as you asked but never answered any of my own. You were wronged and no one you know is to blame. Reality faced you the second death walked out the door.
Sorrow transcends the gap that bridges me from you from a guy I’ve never even seen. Community offers this (pathetic) sense of consolation. I know you don’t want me to ask if you’re all right, I know that only makes this whole thing hurt worse. But the second you start handicapping us is the moment YOU become an invalid.
I’ll hit a little slower and I’ll speak a little quieter so I can pray a little harder. It’s our shortcomings that warrant a salvation unattainable on our own. But it’s NOT your shortcomings that sent him home a little early. It might be that he was saying, “Christ if you want to come back. I think I’m ready for you to come back,” as his heart overflowed through his head.
As I stand above the grave of a stranger I’ll scream aloud the words that locked themselves in your soul. I have not shoulders broad enough, I have not a brain intellectual enough, I have not a heart big enough, but enough is what God promised you and I when He spoke of things like this. This too shall pass.
“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” John 14:2-3
In Loving Memory of: J.D.K.
And beside you I’ll stand, G.E.P.
…the righteous to eternal life.
sometimes I wonder how God can love such pitiful excuses for human beings. i can’t believe how pathetic some people can be. grow up.
sincerely,
matt
I dug a hole to bury the dead. The house I built never became home, the road I walked disappeared into thin air. I knew what I was doing when I asked for a conclusive conversation, a grand finale to our adventure around the world. And you knew what you were doing when you called me back, no turning back. From one parking lot to another, the intro and the outro, man is life ironic.
But, at the end of the day, I had begun to pursue food when it’s water I needed. I put my umbrella up to shade the sun from coming in and really taking me over. I mean, REALLY taking me over. God, please come and absolutely encompass me. I want your love and I want your forgiveness and I want your integrity so I can give it away.
I thought I was doing this for me. And I guess I was in one sense. But step away from this equation and the pixels blur together in comprising the big picture. This was never about me.
thank GOD.
Maybe your five year plan, your hopes and dreams, your idealistic future… it’s not going to fill that hole. That void you thought was a house with a white picket fence, a car, a ring on your finger - they are all social norms that are expected but don’t offer solace to anyone searching for anything more than complacency.
Your future is not what school you go to, what job you work, what things you own; it is what has yet to happen. Whose lives will you touch? That is what will make your footprint here. Never mind meeting goals of wealth and success. Change people’s hearts for the better, make someone’s life easier, teach a child something that he will never forget. There is your future. Those are the things you cannot lose, you cannot take back.
I don’t want anything I don’t already have other than a place in the hearts of those I love. I don’t ask for anything besides good memories, honesty, a fair mindset, and the ability to love without bounds.
When all is said and done, when the children of God return home, what have we done here that will matter?
“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” CSLewis
I know I’m alive mostly because I’ve seen death and it didn’t recognize me. I’m not saying I gave it a proper introduction but who’s to say death deserves that formality anyhow. Dignity is something you can’t obtain on your own. Self worth isn’t selfish, it loves when others are safe and you’re life is threatened, it laughs when others experience joy and your life seems in shambles. You see, our worship to God isn’t a do or die obligation. It’s because my neighbor is healthy, because I have clothes on my back, because He is who He is. That HAS to be reason enough.
Greetings from Linz, Austria. I finally have a little time to write and respond to emails, etc.
A few nights ago I watched a movie called Shooting Dogs on our bus during a night drive. I tried searching for it on Rotten Tomatoes and couldn’t find it so I assume most of you haven’t even seen it.
It’s in the vein of Hotel Rwanda and is worth the watch.
Regardless, it inspired me to write the following:
What is good should not die out. But who decides what is good?
Trying to make a difference, starring in your own Broadway play, and then…there’s all this. You won’t ever get numb to the pain. Human nature might deny you that right but in its place will deny someone’s self-worth.
Did the dogs open fire? Were they shooting at you? According to your mandate if you are to shoot the dogs they must have shot first.
Is it just because they’re told to? The motions aren’t taken by one’s own initiative but rather by the instruction of another. Is there no more hope left to go around?
Does a threshold exist that shuts this all down? Is there any amount of pain that can make the sun dry all these tears? You would think that… that something in the ‘design,’ that if you feel enough pain, everything would shut down before it was more then anyone should have to bear.
Terrible things may happen, but however terrible they are, “I’ll see you through it. I know what it is you’ll feel, I know what it is you’ll see, I myself have experienced death in all of its power.” Though you might lose most of what you have, your dignity you will keep.
And some will ask, “where is God in all that is happening here, in all this suffering? He is right here, with these people, suffering. His love is here, more intense and profound then what we might ever feel. And there too, our hearts must be. And if we leave, our souls, we might not ever find again.