Moving on

Hey Everyone - check out my new blog which I am going to be updating now!

http://zandkbyington.wordpress.com

"Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that is 'finding his place in it,' while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of really being at home on Earth, which is just what we want. You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the middle-aged and the old." -- Screwtape letters

Pictures!

I wanted to update you all with some pictures from our time here! We are now in the last week - so its a time of sadness as we prepare to leave and a time of expectation as we prepare for the next season. Thank you for your prayers and support as we have served here.

Monkey!!

Katie's Class at Heritage International School

 One of the first aid students "performing" CPR

 The Heritage boys soccer team

 The incinerator that dad and I built at the baby home

 Chickens!! Yes, they are alive :-)

Us at the source of the Nile in Jinja

Riots

On Friday, returning from Aggies Baby Home, it looked as if the country had gone crazy. Years of pent-up anger and frustration unleashed on the streets of Kampala - and on themselves. The cycle of violence continues. We passed burning roadblocks, huge stones rolled in the middle of the road, and empty tear gas canisters which littered the ground. It was the left-overs of what people around the world are terming another "day of rage" -
              - like Egypt
              - like Tunisia
              - like Libya
              - like Syria

Seeing these things reminded me of what an embattled, broken world we live in - a world desperate for shalom - for His inbreaking kingdom.

and so we pray for peace - we pray for His Easter newness.

Newness

"On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that, citizens; on this side, orphans; on that, children; on this side, captives; on that, free men." ~ Henry Beecher

        It's been almost 2 weeks since I've written! There has been no lack of things to write about! Katie's parents came and visited for a week, two of my first aid classes graduated, the Heritage International School boys soccer team that I coach made it to the championship and Katie is now the full-time teacher in her 3rd grade classroom.

        We had a wonderful time with Katie's parents! We spent most of our time at New Hope Orphanage and Aggies Baby Home. Dad I I worked on building an incinerator for the diapers while Katie and mom showed some love to the babies. We fed the children banana's and bread and are continuing to treat around 100 children for fungal infections on their head. Each time we serve among those children it increases in me a longing for God's permanent newness - His ultimate redemption. Walter Brueggemann writes in his book Peace, 

"Newness is about to burst into our lives and, indeed, into the world. But the newness comes not without a price, and the price is death to all present arrangements, death to fear and to small hopes, death to old visions and memories. And those who are ready for death to all that the world calls ‘life’ are the ones to whom life can come." 

And this is what we pray for each morning. His Easter newness.

        Katie and I were talking about the orphans yesterday and she mentioned the verse from Hosea 14 - "In You the orphan finds mercy." She said, "I hope each one of those children has been chosen so that they can receive the love and comfort of God since they have no other family." This stuck with me. The president of World Vision said, "I believe that this could very well be looked back on as the sin of our generation...I believe that our children and their children, 40 or 50 years from now, are going to ask me, what did you do while 40 million children became orphans in Africa?" May we be found faithful with what God has given us.

        There is a divisive force in humanity and it is the gospel of Jesus Christ. To some the truth of Christ is the aroma of life - to others they sense it as the stench of death. Paul asks in 2 Corinthians, "Who is sufficient for these things?" I understand his question in an entirely deeper way now. We all have felt the urging of the Spirit to tell someone about Jesus. I felt this as I was finishing my last English class of the term - and only because of His grace, I told them. While speaking, I sensed how much love hurts for the lost. I sensed how in the proclaiming of the gospel there is an unavoidable grief and sadness for those who don't accept. John Piper illustrates it it this way - 

"Imagine walking through a crowded shopping mall. As you walk through some few people - maybe 7 or 8 out of a hundred begin to follow you out of the mall and everyone one else just drops dead. Wouldn't that be overwhelming? Wouldn't that be too much to bear? That is why Paul asks 'Who is sufficient for these things?'"

        I have often wondered if there is some image, some picture or story I could blog about to make you understand how broken and lost our world is. What picture could i drive into your head so that it would haunt your dreams at night so that you literally could not sit still until you found a way to share Jesus with someone who is going to hell. Only the Spirit can move us in such a way.

Are we open to His leading? Are we faithful?

"You are the God who makes all things new.

We gladly raise our voices and move our lips

to acknowledge, celebrate, and proclaim

Your staggering newness.

As we do so, we hold in our hearts

deep awareness of all the places where your newness

is not visible, and

has not come.

Draw us from the wretchedness we know

to his scarred, bloody wretchedness

that is your odd entry of newness into our life. Amen."

~ Walter Brueggemann

 The Kabaka Dance, the dance for the king

 The kids are happy to have bread!

Some of the babies at the home

Marked

Katie and I really enjoyed our holiday on Tuesday - it was "International Womens Day" here in Uganda and her and I were off from teaching. We went to Owino Market - a HUGE place with over 500,000 venders. They sell everything from clothes to rice to fruit to shoes, we bought our veggies for the week and found gooseberries there! We had Katogo for lunch - a Ugandan dish cooked in a banana leaf. At night we celebrated Shrove Tuesday with the Heritage teachers by having a pancake dinner. 

I realized again this week what a blessing it is to be married to Katie and to be here together.

I also realized recently that I work all day with people that are going to hell. Each handshake and smile and conversation only served to confirm that reality. The weight of this hit me near the end of the day. Sitting on the grass, laughing with Patrick and preparing to play soccer with the Somali refugees I looked up to see them lined up. Eight image-bearers turned bronze by the fading sunlight. As they spread their shirts on the ground to prepare for evening prayers a loud cry comes across the sky - the call to prayer from the boziga mosque. I watched them kneel and go down for their prayers and couldn't help think of Jesus looking at the crowds feeling compassion for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd (Matt 9). I wonder what Jesus felt when it says he was "deeply moved" - did he see the crowd in light of redemptive history? 

I cried a lot the other night - the reality of being chosen, marked and set aside while others are not. A deep sense of unworthiness has pervaded me these last few days - and I cannot forget those that do not sense the nearness of His hand - the faithfulness of His love each morning. And so in these Lenten days we pray and wait and are filled with longing for others to know of His Easter presence.

“The mystery of iniquity is at work in the world during this interim time, and it is not always clear how its malignant work is being checked, overridden, or woven into the glorious purposes of God. We need to remember, though, that while Judas betrayed Christ, and woe to him for doing so, it was God’s plan that Christ was thus betrayed. Evil by its very nature opposes the purposes of God, but God, in his sovereignty, can make even this evil serve his purposes.” 

~ David Wells

A reality

I am teaching several classes at Center of Hope. I have many refugee women from Sudan in my classes. None of them have finished elementary school. It brought into the reality the statistic that more women in Sudan die from childbirth than finish elementary school.

Streams of living water

"Is there a balm… in Gilead or anywhere? 

Is there medicine for what ails us? 

Is there healthcare with you, so absent everywhere else? 

Is there a drug to deal with our infection? 

Is there a heavy dose for our pathology?"

 

~Walter Brueggemann on reading Jeremiah 8

Katie had the week off from school because of the presidential and mayoral elections. I have continued teaching the refugees at the center - its a wonderful opportunity and I really enjoy teaching first aid and CPR! Museveni won the elections - of course. I even received a text on my phone that said, "The old man in the yellow hat thanks you for making him president of Uganda." I thought that was funny. On the way back from Good Shephard Home we were stopped by a huge crowd of people that had gathered to watch the Presidential motorcade enter Kampala. We waved at President Museveni! The elections were mostly peaceful, a few riots broke out on thursday and friday when it was revealed that the mayoral elections were being rigged. figures. :-)

On Friday we went to Good Shepherd Home, a Catholic Mission that serves people with disabilities ranging from birth deformities to a children with cerebral malaria whose heads had swelled to the size of a basketball. The kids were dying for attention and love. Katie helped to feed some of the children and then did physical therapy with several of them. She told me about one child who didn't have arms past the elbow. By balancing the spoon on his elbow and manipulating it with his chin, he was able to feed himself. I watched a child draw pictures with a pencil between his toes because he was born without arms. He was such a good artist! Good Shepherd has a clinic there that helps the residents and community, I was able to help them during the afternoon treat children with head fungus. The things one experiences here are crushing, wearying. 

Yesterday, as Katie and I were boarding a matatu to leave the city center, we encountered several children on the street. They just sat there, dirty, in rags, holding out a hand. You can't give them money because it doesn't go to them but rather to the men who "control" the begging industry in Kampala. Katie and I went child by child handing out small pieces of candy, but each time it seemed they didn't even know what to do with it. they would silently look at it and then back at us.  They didn't open it, didn't smile, they just stared. it seemed their innocence had been taken from them. i have seen many street kids, but something about this altercation drained us, we felt weary, fatigued. i prayed for those kids a long time last night - its not the way its supposed to be.

In the last chapter of Amos, God tells Israel that He is going to send a famine on the land - not a famine of hunger or thirst, but of His word. People will "stagger from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; They will go to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, but they will not find it." His words are life - did not Christ say that streams of living water would flow from us? I wonder how much i believe that. When i am squeezed, is it Christ that comes out? What is the quality of my faith? What is the righteous response to encountering injustice or suffering? "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored?" Jeremiah 8:22

Your words are life O Lord.

                                                                      Boda-Boda Driver with 7 kids!!!! CRAZY!!!!

The Gap

I have loved teaching English and First Aid to the refugees throughout the week. My classes yesterday were packed! I really like that Katie and I are both teaching because I am able to learn a lot about teaching styles and creative activities. Please pray that relationships and more opportunities to share the gospel with the refugees would come about as a result of class time. 

Katie and I are really enjoying our time at the orphanage. She spent the whole day holding and loving the babies while I worked on some projects they needed completed. To hear the stories of the babies at the home is overwhelming. One baby was left on the railroad tracks to die, another was found on top of her dead mother, many are left on doorsteps or out in the middle of the street. Some are not reached in time. Agnes recounted to us a story of one baby in her neighborhood who was eaten by a dog. It is these kind of stories, matched with the faces of the babies at the orphanage, which will continue to haunt you. These things keep you up at night. Who would throw away a child? Who would leave a child to be killed?The darkness of our souls, the depravity of our natures runs so deep. Do we realize what evil we are capable of - or from what depths of sin we have been saved?

Whether it is processing things at the orphanage, hearing the Muslim call to prayer or hearing the stories of refugees, I cannot get over the deep sadness that i feel over what is, and what could be, between what is, and what should be. That gap, breaks your heart. What do you do? How do you handle that? You worship. You go back to Jesus until He fills you up. We are purposed to live for Him, to embody the humility and sacrifice of Christ, to be broken bread and poured out wine.

"Because we believe that One died for all because all had died, and those that live now longer live for themselves but for Him, who was crucified and was raised again." 

~ 2 Cor 5

Biggest bug ever...

This week I started coaching the 9-11 year olds at Heritage International School. They won there first game on Tuesday! Katie is enjoying her internship at the school and we both are being stretched in different ways by the ministries we are involved in. Work at the Center is going well though the needs often seem overwhelming. Though the refugees that come to the center appear normal many of there stories are filed with violence, trauma, suffering and loss. There is an enormous need for redemption. 

Mix that with the poverty and constant pressing on my heart for the unreached Muslims of Kampala and you will understand why i found Matthew so encouraging this week. Near the end of Jesus' ministry it says he looked at the crowds and felt compassion for them for they were like sheep without a shepherd. Turning to his disciples he didn't tell them to organize or strategize a way to reach them, instead he told them to pray for more workers because the fields were white with harvest and the workers were so few.

So prayer has sustained me this week. Where else can we go?

C.S. Lewis says in A Grief Observed, "My idea of God is not a divine idea, it must be shattered again and again." I have been struck again and again by how unconventional and boundless God is. Brueggemann writes, "We know You to be no easy mark." How many times do I substitute the hard reality of God for an easier loyalty, a "lesser god"? When was the last time i remembered that Jesus is all we have?

One more thing - we found the biggest bug i've ever seen next to our bed yesterday morning - how would you like to wake up to this? :-) i'm told its a kind of cockroach.

Taking it all in

I sat down to write my first blog here in Kampala several days ago - but simply could not find words. How can i convey the madness of this city? The crowds, the organized chaos, the ex-pat community, the urban slums, the incessant call to prayer, the red dirt and the dark eyes together make up the mystery of this city. 

Katie and I live in an upper middle class area of Kampala - just a 15 minute walk from her school. 20 minutes in the opposite direction is Refuge and Hope - one of the organizations that I will be helping while here. Jammed between the high-walled housing compounds are shacks and vegetable stands. The weather is hot but not unbearable, at night it cools off with the rain storms. We hear the muslim call the prayer all the time - a warning cry of their growth and influence. I know that thousands in this city die without Christ daily - a grief-filled reality.

Katie loves the teacher and children she is with in the third grade class. I am working with refugees from Eritrea, Sudan and Congo. I start teaching skill classes and English on Monday. We are still trying to settle in and find a routine. Today we went to an orphanage we will be going to each week. 900 children. It is unbelievable and overwhelming. I'll tell you more about that in weeks to come.

Stephen Lewis once said "All I know is that every time I go to Africa I am shaken to my core." I LOVE it here, the people, the smiles, the jokes - but there is definitely something which is unsettling, a grief which must be prayed through. I think only in the times that I stop and wait on God is the fullness of this realized. God is so faithful, and so very present. We count on His presence more than we realize. 

prayers

We count so on Your presence
and yearn, in each season, for Your nearness.
And you -
Faithful,
Pursuing,
Present,
Bring Your newness
      because we are always seeking elsewhere and otherwise
Bring us to Your field
      because You have a better treasure waiting for us

Fill our days

      until all we are is longing

We pray in the name of Jesus, our saving One

3 nights in

Love hurts; it grieves, cries out, aches and writhes in pain. Sometimes it hurts so much it wears you out. I walk into the detox center at night and it seems like everyone has a hose and their looking for someone to plug it into and suck dry because they haven't felt love in such a long time. A kind word, an offered prayer - what a lot to a starving man is that.

God has begun to open many doors at work. Last night there were many opportunities to pray, listen to, and share with the men in the detox facility. I'm 3 nights into the job and am on the border of compassion fatigue. We try to walk such a tightrope between our own soul care and living with eyes wide open, seeking the suffering heart of God. He is there, in the midst of those men, longing to be manifested in the lives of His followers. And this is our great task - to be like Christ. Our sufficiency is found in Him - when this is lived out, i think the tightrope becomes a field to run and jump and enjoy. And so we pray for that - we long for Him.

Oh Lord, we daily need your help and grace. Thank you for not always giving us answers - because you always give us Yourself. and that is enough.

Season A

He calls us into His loneliness, His solitude, His feeling. All day long we feel created, we sense pieces of our createdness in each moment. Those days are especially blessed. Autumn brings many of these days, some overwhelming, some simple and subtle. Isn't all change like that? Each new bend, new season, new day carries with it glimpses of God. The leaves are turning, the days are shortening, summer has past, life is moving; the Lord brings beautiful change.

I got a job working with new life ambulance. then i quit. it wasn't where i was supposed to be. my last day one of the patients crashed at dialysis. i read psalm 39 that morning. it was all about the finitude of life. i need to think more about this.

I started my new job last night. I work in a detox facility taking vitals, assisting with medications, and monitoring patients coming off of drugs and alcohol. i haven't seen tracking marks like this before - their veins are wrecked, their minds broken. its sad to see these people - these men and women created in the image of God. i pray for sensitivity, for urgency in my prayers, for wisdom in how much i allow it to affect me. its crazy how helpless we are apart from God - i can't even go to work without His guiding presence. how encouraging that He is with us always - even unto the end of the age. (Matt 28:20) i love this thought.

The shadows are lengthening, this is my favorite time of day! I could go do a hundred different things - or i could sit here and enjoy the fullness of life which is found in Christ. what does that mean? it means waiting on Him. i need His wisdom.

Mob Night

I will tell you what happened to me with the hope that in relating the events, I will move from one simply acted upon to one who seeks reconciliation. In writing this, I act not only as a witness but also as judge over the events which transpired. This is not simply a retelling, but also a repenting, for the hate which was so terribly displayed that night lurks within me and within every person in the world, binding us together in chaos. 

       We were four white boys ambling back to our hotel after a tiring day at the local orphanage. The nightly calm had descended as the air grew thick with humidity. A recently risen white moon illuminated the Yao nomads walking home from harvesting the maize fields. The rakes and spades on their shoulders bore signs of age and over-use. An assortment of oversized torn slacks and stained longees hung off their lean bodies like clothes on a makeshift scarecrow. 

       It was these 30 odd men who dragged the screaming man from the bushes and began beating him. He had stolen something, making the one mistake which must never be made – being caught by one’s neighbors. When I questioned people later about that night, they smiled and said, “That is the way here, it is African justice.” 

       The spade could only be seen at the peak of its ascent before crashing onto the helpless man in the middle of the crowd. The field workers swarmed the bowed thief, each trying to land a kick or punch. They seemed to have lost all restraint. We were white and ignorant and sure such madness could not continue. As the four of us broke into the tumult of bodies, I think we all knew we had crossed a threshold where our sense of justice was no longer accepted. 

The tall Dutchman, Coen, picked up the crumpled, bleeding man while the rest of us began pushing the mob away. They were fiends, demons in disguise come to wreak their distorted sense of justice upon the thief. Their black souls were filled with suppressed malice, a malice born of poverty and desperation. Surrounded by injustice, they echoed and manifested that reality in brutal acts against each other, not realizing that they only added to the cycle of violence which they hated. Perhaps that is why we become the things we hate. Men choose hate because it’s easier than love and more comforting than emptiness.

       I pushed a man to the ground, continuing to scream my frustration. All I wanted to do was collapse in their midst and let them pass me by. I saw confusion and anger in their dark faces. The white man, with his high sense of justice, had entered a place he knew nothing about. I gathered all this from the eyes of an old coffee-colored Yao man with a puff of white hair on his chin. He knew I was acting out of ignorance, that I couldn’t reconcile this “African justice” with what I considered to be right. So, when he went to land another blow on the thief, he went around me instead of through me. His puff of white hair blew by me as quickly as a wisp of smoke in a strong breeze. His fist fell twice before he backed off, breathing heavily from exertion and gratification. His desire for justice slaked, the old man disappeared into the mob, swallowed by the frenzy of bodies that pushed forward with death in their eyes.

       They call it “African justice.” These clashes are parochial, obscure, subjective, yet part of an overarching quarrel: the eternal struggle of man against his condition. Devoid of the gospel, injustice has free reign. Viewed this way, Africa represents the oldest, largest killing field in human history. The deep-seated evil revealed on that night cannot be met by development strategies or sanitation, but only by the gospel of Jesus Christ. I have witnessed corruption in the face of a screaming man and seen it mirrored in the dark rage of my own soul. Neither can be excused or ignored. I cannot deny my responsibility to live in His likeness, to bear His image.

       Some say that something under the black skin drives them to violence, a thing “untamable.” If this is true, it is a condition, a disease which infects all humanity. That vein of anger runs through each human community, touching all ages and affecting every soul in the world. The victims become the perpetrators, like an abused son who in blind anger becomes the image of the hated father. One becomes tired of passivity and being acted upon. Eventually, the beleaguered soul awakes and reveals the character of the man as he manifests the tumult inside him. We are what we choose to be, there is no divorce between self and its image, no disjunction of being and action. Actions are glimpses of the soul, and the soul is formed by the circumstances it undergoes. Ellie Wiesel says, “Anyone who describes the future as virgin is mistaken; for it is mortgaged from the first day, from the first cry.”

       Passivity is crushing. The soul must respond in rage, reconciliation, or ignorance. I am a witness of rage, an advocate of reconciliation, and a fighter against ignorance. As we exited the police station we glanced at the silent, bloody thief heaped like a sack of rice on a dirty plastic chair. We had received no thanks for saving his life. Perhaps he wanted to die, perhaps we only saved him to live another day under a hot sun he despised. The cycle of violence will invariably continue, because in Africa, Cain is still trading blows with Abel.

---

Nouwen says, "The real pain is the pain that i find in God who allowed all of earth's suffering to enter into his divine intimacy. The experience of God's presence is not void of pain. But the pain is so deep that you do not want to miss it since it is in this pain that the joy of God's presence can be tasted."

Today, my heart feels heavy and full.
Today, Africa is on my mind.
Today, I remember what a refugee camp really feels like, the smell, the dirt, the permanently homeless, the hopeless gaze of empty eyes.

I read the news on somalia today - half a country made homeless - who is sufficient for them?

Much to Bear

There are days that can only be classified as overwhelming. There seems much to bear, whether in prayer or in how we converse about our "daily lives" when others are buried under concrete. The death tole from the earthquake that hit Haiti yesterday is expected to be in the hundreds of thousands. we just don't have categories for that kind of suffering, an entire country made homeless, what must that be like? And God, where is He? Closer to home we found out the results from moms pathology after her surgery last week, it was not good news. And so we grieve and cry and recognize the gift of a single day and ask for strength to live well, to enjoy the depth of our human pilgrimage.

Some would say He is terribly absent, others that He is especially near. Still more would say that an earthquake is from His hand, and that the many questions that arise from this ambiguous calamity must be asked. Eventually though, we must deliver many of them back to that black box of mysteries, a box which is infinitely deep because our God is infinitely and wonderfully deep.

And we pray, always, desperately. daring to hope.

Again

We are back from the hospital. The initial wave is over. Mom is ok. We can start breathing again; start figuring out how to live with this reality in mind, rather than living around this reality. They kept her overnight because the pain was not subsiding with normal relievers so they wanted to put her on morphine. I spent the night in the lazy-boy next to her bed, which was great because it gave us a chance to finally talk.

And now its back up to Moody for another semester. I’m looking forward to the drive up because it always gives me a chance to think. I need that. I feel like I’m going into this semester a little confused, rather tired, but very expectant. A 6 hour EMT class plus 15 credits at Moody and 20 hours of work will make this a busy semester, but it will also make it full of opportunities. I find that in the rush of the temporal I am forced to sit and wait for the refreshing stillness of the eternal. To wait for Him until He comes. When you envision something so much that it actually begins to change your mood, you are finally approaching faith. A vision like this acknowledges both the depth and pain of our own human pilgrimage as well as a God who is relentlessly initiating death and new beginnings. And there’s hope in that.

I heard a story of an old violinist who was traveling around Europe on his last performance tour. At a show played in Brussels there was a young man who sat awed at the aged musician’s skill. The man was quite sure he had never heard the violin played so beautifully. After the concert he approached the old musician and said, “I would give my life to play like you.”

The violinist looked intently at the eager admirer standing before him and replied, “I have given my life to play like me.”

We will all give our lives to something. I am reminded of the stories of squander in the Bible, the rich young ruler, the widow with her last pennies, the disciples, Jesus’ life. Setting out to be given over to God is in itself committing an act of hope. In “The End of the Affair” Sarah writes in her journal to God, 

“You were there, teaching us to squander as you taught the rich man, so that one day we might have nothing left except this love of You.” 

Lewis has a similar thought in his “Weight of Glory”, 

“Can anything be added to the conception of being with Christ? For it must be true, as an old writer says, that he who has God and everything has no more than he who has God only.”

 Thank you all for your prayers and concern with mom’s cancer. We pray for His peace upon this next season, His immanence in our weariness, His joy in our eyes. Have a great week friends. We live with hope.

These days...

These have been good days, much needed time with family and friends apart from the stress of work and school. On Christmas I made sweedish pancakes for breakfast, a tradition that has been in the family since I was 5 or 6. Papa taught me to make them and we would do them together each Christmas morning until he passed away 2 years ago. I have tried to carry on the tradition, though I doubt they will ever turn out as good as his. Christmas was small this year with all my grandparents now passed away and Maegan in Turkey. I have been spending a lot of time reading, mostly it has been the EMT textbook but I have found time to finish reading Brueggemann’s “Praying the Psalms” and Lewis’ “Weight of Glory.”

Last week Ryan and I hike Mt. Bierdstadt, a 14,060 ft. mountain just west of Denver (see pictures below). It was breathtaking. We had to snowshoe to the foot of the mountain, but decided to rough it up the rest of the way though it involved a lot of slipping and careful stepping. The icy snow came in handy on the way down when we slid down snow field after snow field, the longest of them being about 200 ft.

Mom goes into surgery on Thursday for her breast cancer. I can’t accurately express all the emotions and thoughts that daily go through my head on this issue. She hasn’t looked at all well this week, which has brought the cancer to the forefront of my thoughts. It is a reality that we live with as a family now. Between the alkaline diet, the oxygen treatments and the unthought-through, well-meaning words of those around us it becomes impossible to pass a few hours without the realization that mom has cancer. It makes me pray differently, makes me think differently, and constantly serves to remind us of how fragile and momentary life is. Running the other day I watched the sunset for a long time and was again reminded of the sheer gift of life.

Our longings are chasms which we don’t know how to bridge, they are reflections for the things which won’t be lost, or taken, or destroyed. There are moments where the present awe of a thing, an image, molds with the secret longing lying dormant in our hearts and ALL OF US BECOMES WAITING, from “the bottom of our toes to the edges of our fingertips.” God works in our life with images and we are wont to revel in them alone, failing to see that the glory is not IN them, rather it comes THROUGH them. I am guilty of this. That is why when I read Donnes “Batter My Heart” I am deeply moved by the line “Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me” but fail to bring it into actuality because I’m not sure I’ve ever been “ravished” by God. Perhaps I am still waiting. I love the words, the idea, but fail to understand them.

Lewis says,

“In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you – the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually happened in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name.”

Does this “betrayal” come through in how you pray?

Have you been “ravished”?

I’m not sure I’ve “allowed” God this – the ache for it is there, but so is the fear.

 

 

 

 

Part 3 - Final Thoughts

According to Bishop Wright, the gospels tell a double story:

“They tell the story of how the evil in the world - political, social, personal, moral, emotional, and demonic - reached its height. And they also tell the story of how God’s long term plan for His people, and if we can put it like this, God’s long-term plan for Himself, finally came to its climax. They are about the atonement with every line; they are about the problem of evil with every paragraph. They are about evil of all sorts converging like a dark storm cloud and about God’s representative Messiah going to the heart of that storm cloud alone. The gospels read in this way offer us a richer theology of atonement and a deeper understanding of evil in our own day.”

From the political evil of Rome and Herod to the casual injustice of Caiphus to the corruption of the Pharisees to the screaming demoniacs, we are able to witness what ultimate goodness does when faced with the dark reality of humanities malevolence. In Romans 12, Paul instructs us to “overcome evil with good.” Is this a call to righteous vengeance? No. Rather it turns us back to the cross, where Christ himself confronted social, economic, political and individual evil, defeating it through the power of the Spirit. According to Wright, God’s just response to evil is not simply designed to solve a philosophical puzzle, nor is it designed to help a world that’s gottten out of kilter; rather, His response is meant to bring to glorious fruition the creation which evil has devastated and “uncreated.” An answer to the problem of evil is found in the life of Jesus, where evil reached its terrible zenith, and the suffering servant withstood it to bring new life to His errant creation.

God’s restorative, redemptive justice is ever at work; we only need the eyes to see it. One way to learn what justice looks like is to examine how He has worked before; read the Bible, and especially the gospels, carefully examining Jesus’ handling of evil. Ask questions and seek answers, but reconcile yourself to the mystery of the Creator God.

Judging from the screams of the demoniacs echoing off the waters of the Sea of Galilee to the air of deadliness lingering over the killing fields of Pol Pot, there is the overwhelming sense that we live on an embattled precipice. This is not to suggest that the ultimate victory will not belong to Christ, but rather that we are purposed to be much more involved in the darkness of our present times than we are. Albert Einstein says, “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” A theology of evil is not an easy framework to construct, but it is a necessary one. Careful study, active discussion and insistent prayer are critical places to start when facing the overwhelming reality of the human condition.