the messiness...

"The world is a mess; that's hardly deniable. The world fell from its innocence when we disobeyed the law of love in Eden, and ever since then the world (our home) has been marked by misery and mess - war broken relationships, poverty, disease, greed, crime, injustice, hatred, loneliness, hunger, ignorance and death, to name just a few of the common messes that ruin our human living. And we know the particular messes of our own individual lives and of our own society and time. Just think of the messes that have been in the news of late: runaway debt, joblessness and economic anxiety, sexual abuse and terrorism, and on. And on.

God considered it well, we may trust; if he was to incarnate himself and become fully human, he would have to come into all the messiness of our world and at least for a time, be not only immersed in it but actually undone by it - drowned in it, so to speak. Bu that is the grace of Christmas, that God was willing to do that, for love's sake. Christ Jesus came into the messy world to save sinners.... Christ came into the world as a baby to save me, to rescue me, not only from the just wrath of the living God, but also from all the messes I've created, or inherited, or aggravated... The messes are precisely what he came to redeem by subjecting himself to them, all the way to death!" - Ron Lutjens, "Advent 2011"

Corinne Bailey Rae - that's what I'm listening to right now. It's amazing how music can change your mood and somehow make it all better. I think music is somehow part of God's common grace to us. It is part of the world that reflects a better place and that can make us feel at home, content, and just happy.

Right now I'm seeing more of the brokenness of life and the world and my little world and yet I know, at least in my head, that isn't the full picture. Hmm... thank goodness for happy music. "Just like a star" and the rest of that album is shining some sun on my rainy, dark day, which in reality isn't all that dark.

Uf... That last picture is quite appropriate to how I feel right now - a big iceberg. This has been a tough, frustrating week and there is much under the surface right now in respect to my emotions. I just got off the phone with a friend only to realize that I was probably not the best listener nor the most empathetic friend tonight. And I feel horrible about it. And yet I have a ton of emotions under the surface, most of which are unfixable circumstances at least unfixable by me. They are fully manageable for the God of all creation and even in the midst of messing people and bad decisions, he can actually redeem the situation. But right now I'm wrestling to let God be God and to realize that I am a mere mortal who needs to pray, rest, and trust Him.

Here is actually the link to where my friend is working in Haiti.

And here is a video you can watch about Haiti and this organization prior to the earthquake. It brought tears to my eyes, particularly as I think of the present reality there.

My friend just posted this recently on facebook: Mass graves are being filled all over the city and many of the Clays Haitians friends have had their houses and families destroyed. Appreciate your prayers. I am trying to recall everything i can from first aid classes as i clean wounds and wrap limbs.

It breaks my heart and yet I'm grateful there are people like her there to be God's hands and feet and voice to these people.

haiti

Here are a couple pictures, but you can find more here at the BBC:

Surely you've heard about the tragic earthquake in Haiti the night before last. As I walked the beautiful streets of Paris, I was struck by our desperate need to be rescued from this world from it's tragedy, death, and hurt. This is a much more in-your-face bit of reality of the fact that we don't live in a world that is as it should be. A children's hospital was destroyed in the disaster, the poorest of the poor were killed as well, people going about their daily business whatever that may be will never awake to see another day,... dark, dark death. While this is much more clear, I think the reality in which each of us lives on a daily basis, sometimes more clearly than others, is full of the walking dead. Somehow I want my heart to be quickened to see the needs of those in my midst and to also continue to have real hope of a world without death, tragedy, injustice, or hurt, a world where all things are made right. As I was processing life, I was again reminded that this world that I long for does in fact exist and that it will come to pass. While we live in a broken world, dreadfully broken on all levels, that merely points to my need for one greater than me. And I think it also calls us to action, to be light in a broken world and to really be the hands and feet of hope and light. We may be far removed from Haiti, but, one, we still can do an awful lot for them and, two, there are people in need just around the corner from us. It's a bit sobering...