CHURCH

Today, life was stripped down and shown in glaring black and white, in my face, unwanted and unasked for. Death has a way of making me stop and look at life. Suffering has a way of making me stop and acknowledge evil and the opportunity to do good. I went to church this morning with every intention of sitting there, absorbing some good thoughts, going home and sleeping all afternoon. Today I saw, again, my own selfishness and had the opportunity to understand God’s heart with out understanding his will.
We heard about Haiti. We heard of the frantic efforts to help the dying; We heard of the plea’s of the injured; We heard of the lost and alone in a sea of thousands. I think the saddest picture I saw was of two people carrying a coffin. It was the only coffin I saw. For the unnamed thousands of others, their casket is the bucket of a dump truck. Brutal truth.
It is said you can hear the cries of the trapped, the alone, the buried, “the unreachable”. Then the sounds stop and you simply hope God filled their last moments.
Why is it so important that we reach the unreachable, after there’s no more time? Why can’t we reach the unreachable, before tragedy makes it almost impossible? Why does it even have to take tragedy to bring the church to their knees, to see the sadness of lost souls, to strain with all they have to ease hurts? It makes me want to weep, not only for the loss of humanity, but also the way it represents lost opportunity. Now I have this opportunity to look at this hurt, this loss of life, and either turn away and wish it hadn’t happened, or embrace and learn and grow and really live in the present.
There’s a verse in Revelation 22 that I love. It speaks about a tree by a river, “..and its leaves were for the Healing of the Nations”.
Seeing the heart of God, even when I don’t understand...
~Sonya