an uncomfortable voice

Challenged: that’s the word that pounds in my chest and shouts in my head. I mean really challenged.

Sometimes it seems like too often we use this word and it never gets us anywhere. We can say that we are “challenged” but we are never really moved, we can be “challenged” but never really shaken, at least not to the point of response. Yet how can we be challenged in and by faith without responding?

Faith cannot have a non-response.

Either we accept the challenge, the invitation to be used by God, or we push it aside. Ultimately, its a choice between what's comfortable and what's uncomfortable.

This morning I received an email that shared the newest post from one of the blogs that I follow. Often times I dismiss them because the posts are so long to read. Yet this morning, unintentionally, I happened to click on the email, and when it opened I was immediately immersed; completely captured by the words . . . this is what she wrote. . . 
 

I am not going to lie.
When your kin comes knocking on your own back door — come to ask how that trip to Haiti went — how can you look them in the eye and lie?
How can you lie still when babies are drowning in a sea of poverty?
How can you not scream?
I tell Mama that I think I’m angry.
Mama sits down.
And I pace, this hunting for words for the indescribable. And it comes out haltingly, that I think if I open my mouth, it will come right out, this roar. This inhumane, howling moan that only the Spirit can make any sense of…
Angry? She says.
And there’s no holding this tattered roar back.

I’m angry at sin that smothers children and selfishness that steals human dignity and apathy that infects the hearts of the comfortable. And I pound my own chest.
I’m angry at me.
Angry at how much I want comfortable more than I want Christ.
Angry at how much I want to forget that grimy boy leaned over a garbage heap, wiping his fingers along the inside of food tray, looking for anything left. I’m wildly angry that I want to forget the struggle of the poor so I can pin the next pretty idea on Pinterest.
I’m angry that I’ve seen and I’m ashamed that I am angry and I’m angry that I’ve seen and now I am responsible. More than response-able – we’re response-bound. Once we have seen the poor, we are responsible — we will make a response. As long as your heart is beating, there’s no such thing as unresponsive. We all look into the face of the poor and it’s either Yes, I will help. Or no, I won’t.
There’s no getting off the hook.
Faith cannot have a non-response.
We’re either responding with indifference or with intercession, either with apathy or aid.
You can’t look into the face of the poor and just plead the fifth amendment. Your life is always your answer.
I feel sick that I feel so angry.
Sick that I want to Pin with abandon, that I don’t want to be a witness, that I want someone else be an uncomfortable voice for the poor. Sick that six weeks from now I can grow cold and forget. I have.

Why do Christians make their lives tell all these half-truths?

How long can you walk around feeling like you have whiplash? Is heart whiplash what you need to wake your heart up?

Why would we rather turn a blind eye to the needy than turn to the needy and be like Christ? Do we like our own wants and comfort more than we want to be like Christ?

-   -   -

 

If the grace of my life is mostly where I am born, and I am born again into the family of Christ, than how can my life birth anything other than a grace that gives?
It’s what I found right here in Haiti: it’s all in the end a gift and a gift never stops being a gift, it’s always meant to be given, and it’s all by His grace alone and I bend my stiff neck and I’m wrecked and everything gives way.
Why do good things happen to people who happen to take all that good for granted?

I am so angry and so much at me.
When you are born again into the Kingdom of God, how can you ever again forget your kin? Part of the solution to poverty is doing whatever it takes to get your heart to stay with the poor.
There may be miles between the rich and the poor, but how can there be distance in the family of God. 
 

Challenged.

Challenged to respond.

Challenged to live in the uncomfortable.

Challenged to want Christ more than I want comfortable.

 

“To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in His steps.” 1 Peter 2:21

into the mess

Before I began blogging, I was clueless as to how many blogs were actually written by young adults. There is inspiration to be found in many of them, especially when you find other bloggers that have the same perspectives and beliefs as you.

But, while it may be encouraging and even inspiring to read their stories, sometimes I walk away feeling like there is an expectation to meet. After seeing what seems like, consistently splendid daily lives, it can feel like I too must meet this expectation for my own blog; or more prevailing . . . I then feel like I must meet this expectation in my own life.

And I choke, because my every day life begins to feel too small compared to the expectation.

Recently I read a blog post from a friend, and she include a quote from another blogger that said,

This has been on my mind lately. In the blogging world, we all have a tendency to make life look glamorous and easy and beautiful. And, at times, it is. But, at other times, life is not. Life, quite a lot of the time, is embarrassing, awkward, hard and just...well, not pretty.

Life, quite a lot of the time is not a reel of splendid scenes. Its hard and challenging, its raw emotion and its troublesome at times, it gets confusing and awkward, it can be embarrassing and uncomfortable, but its real, and its okay.

The expectation that life has to be prefect is far from reality. Life is a beautiful mess and we are learning through it all. God knows that we aren’t perfect. . . He doesn’t expect us to be. He does, however, expect us to strive to be more like Him and to be transformed into His likeness. He knows that things can get messy and  He loves us so much that he enters right into the mess with us. He doesn’t wait until things are tidy and perfect, because He knows that we are human, and perfection is simply unattainable.

The call to Christianity is not the call to be perfect. It’s a call to follow the One who is perfect and aim to be more like Him each and every day.

Life is not always picture perfect or ideal, and hardly do we live at a place of constant, blissful contentment. Life is often mundane and routine. Some days are just plain boring and others can be so tiresome. Yet the miracle of it all, is that our God remains the same. He is in the midst of the wearisome and ordinary. He is constant.

In an attempt to end all of these thoughts, I remember a post that another blogger shared. This part of the post seems to sum up my rambling thoughts: 

To adore the one who created the Heavens and the Earth, to give thanks for who He is and all He has given, to worship and commune with Holy God, whispering in the quite, clinging to the noise, believing in all circumstances – this is what makes a life large.  

Finding joy in Him, in a day that goes all wrong, this is the miracle.

every moment

Today I look around and my breath catches in my throat. Blessed. Beyond blessed. Some days seem mundane and others magnificent, but through it all I have the chance to say yes to all He gives. To say thank you for the good and the bad, the mundane and magnificent, because I've learned that a heart turned toward Him is the only way to live full of joy.

But life gets busy, it gets so fast and so full, that at the end of the day it can just feel empty. Some days, I forget to remember that every moment I can live here on my knees with hands raised. . .  if I would just choose to see it.

We wait, expectant, for all He is doing and then it hits me, this is it, this is life to the fullest. He is in the smallest of moments, the moments that pass too soon. I see Him in the smiles of those around me, in the silent mornings and in the late nights, in the laughter and in the friendships that are growing. There isn't a moment that doesn't overflow with His love. Right now I breathe deep and bend knees and raise hands high, choosing not to miss these moments.

Seeing them has not always been easy; but it's because of the hard seasons and deep lessons before, that today is a little easier.

“I know deep in my spirit that the hard seasons don't minimize Him but in fact magnify His goodness. Here is where I learn to know Him more.”

I want to see Him more. I don't want to miss the moments He gives, they are far too precious to miss.

There is a new season ahead of me, a season of growing in God and learning what it fully means to follow after my Father. The anticipation towards it is stirring inside of me; ready for whatever God has in store. 

Again I thank Him for how blessed I am. 

That’s what we are standing under here; His blessings. The grace moments each day and the God-ordained opportunities, He sends them in His perfect timing.  Yet tomorrow, or next week, or even ten minutes from now I could forget to count each moment as holy. I will forget to count the struggles and the heartache as grace moments, and just the same I might even forget to count them in the midst of joyful laughter and contentment. Yet with each day, the more I thank Him for the gifts that He gives, the easier it becomes to see them, even despite the ever shifting circumstances around me.

Every morning, before the daily life begins . . . before I set my feet on the ground beneath, I know I have to pray. . . I have to choose to remember to see the grace moments that He gives.