It rises up inside me like boiling water. This is wrong. This is not right. I must do something. Anger courses through me and I can’t believe someone would have the gall to say such a thing. How can you think that? How can you feel that way? How dumb are you? The questions plow through my mind and I can only burn with rage.
Why doesn’t everybody see things the way I do? Doesn’t everybody know that I’m always right? It’s too bad I’m not the only one who thinks this way. After all, I’m just as stupid as I think everyone else is.
Ignore those feelings of right and wrong. Bury it all beneath a blanket of busyness. I know something’s not right here, but I just don’t care. Don’t give me consequences, I know it’s wrong and I just want to move on. But it’s not that simple. Mourn and wail. Pain is involved. You hurt the ones you love, and those are consequences you can’t ignore. It seems so paradoxical, and yet that’s the human condition. What I want to do I do not do, and what I do I do not want to do. And mask it all under a sunny cloud of today. Exchange smiles, laugh out loud, live. But all the while something’s eating at your heart. You sit down with a book in the quiet, and it drives you crazy. The door is shut and someone’s knocking. It’s the judge, and you refuse to let him in. If you face the pain the judge will quickly dismiss it all, forgiving and forgetting in one simple stroke. The consequences will not be wiped away. But you can begin again, and try not to screw things up so bad this time. What’s it going to take to make me understand?
The rain comes. Washing, cleansing, purifying. The dirt, mud, and grime trickles away. Refreshing rain that soaks to your skin, drips from your hair, and beads on the glass. It’s a fresh start. The grass will grow green again and the people will look with fresh eyes. But not you. You repel the rain like a sealed cement sidewalk. It puddles up, washing away the muck on the surface. But you’ve sealed your heart and won’t let the waters rinse you clean.
Good morning, good night. Tired and restless I struggle on. Never quite satisfied, never quite content. An evening of accomplishment and you want to have fun, an evening of fun and you want to accomplish. I come home and it’s dark, everyone’s in bed. But I’m still up in the darkness, wondering why. Questions taunt my mind, questions of things I always forget, never wanting to entertain the answers that just add to the suck of time from my already busy life. Questions of a home changed and none too eager to go back, but at the same time a longing for it; questions of friends who don’t write back–first it was a week or two, now a month or two. They’ve all but forgotten me and I’ve all but forgotten them. But how can you forget such an important part of your life? They say you can never go home again. And I believe it. Conversations I yearn to have, but they just don’t materialize. Carefully worded questions I want to ask of situations I can never comprehend. It’s all mystery to me. Won’t somebody tell me? Why does it have to be so difficult. Why do I have to be the one? I used to think getting somewhere was more important than the journey. But I’m beginning to favor the journey, more likely than not because of a distaste with the destination. Maybe I should stop asking and go to bed like everyone else. Just like everyone else.
With cold and numb hands I scrape away the November frost from my truck’s windows. I scrape and I scrape, pausing to knock the snow off my ice scraper. Hitting it against my shoe it breaks, the brittle plastic falling to the asphalt. But my windows don’t get off that easily. I pick up the broken blade of the scraper and finish the job.
I walk in and sit down to type, but before I can phrase my first sentence my sleeping roommate asks a question. He probes into my soul, searching out my thoughts, my motivations, my rationale. He’s scraping.
A vespers service full of pain, praise, and knees on cold concrete. I watched the images of starving Sudanese children, the flies buzzing around their bony limbs. I cried out to my God. I fell to my knees. Thoughts of nineties cash and the newest rage flooded my mind. $2 spent on Cokes the night before, and a Sudanese man tells us ten cents would buy a loaf of bread–food for three days. Cries of ‘I want’ turn to ‘I need.’ But I don’t really need anything. I have more than some villages. Orion watches me come in after midnight, again–and God is scraping.
Too many late nights shown true with glazed and baggy eyes. But it’s more than worth it. You often learn more in college outside of class than in it. This week has been one of those weeks. It’s nice to be able to set the responsibilities aside and just enjoy life. To sit down and talk with your roommates for three hours. To laugh. To really get a feel for what drives people. To share what’s on your heart. Some things are just more important than homework.
I want to walk into your sanctuary
And all around me
The angels stop and stare
I want to lay my life
Down before you
I want to lay myself down
By your feet
And weep for joy
That we finally meet
Oh God
Do you ever just get tired of the way things are? Does the way the world work just frustrate you? Priorities are in the wrong order and nobody seems to understand what’s most important. Sometimes it’s just plain frustrating. You know what needs to happen in that case? You just need to change the world.
This sounds like a radical idea. Who am I to change the world? But if you claim to be a follower of God, then it’s your duty to change the world. That’s the whole reason we’re here. It bothers me when Christians hide in their bubbles and try to change what’s inside the bubble. They complain about the outside world, but they never do anything to change it. At best they make changes in their little bubble. But that’s not what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to go out and change the world. So let’s get changing.
So many questions to ask, and I just don’t know where to begin. The thoughts tumble around in my head like clothes in a dryer, and I’m just not sure where to start first. Humanity is such a curious creature. As sad as it sounds, we very much are like a virus that consumes everything as it expands. We consume our planet, its resources, even each other. We are such a fallen race. And I have to wonder where to begin. It’s like eating a whale, you just have to eat it a piece at a time. What will it take to tear into humanity’s webs, hose off the dust, and spread the truth? What will it take to change minds, to affect people’s actions? That is where change manifests itself. I so want to change the world, and I can only see one thing with the power to accomplish such a task. It’s nothing in me, it’s God. The world becomes so much clearer through such a lens. That is the only hope for our sunken humanity. Change the world, God. And start with me.
It’s late on a Monday evening. Perhaps I should be listening to the call of my pillow, rather than the call of my soul. But maybe that’s just it. It’s a question of what’s more important. I’ve already shrugged off the responsibility of work. But maybe it’s not such a powerful statement because it isn’t really work. It involves work, but it’s more play than work. I’ve found that my time is an invaluable resource, and sometimes I just need to throw everything else aside and sit. Allow myself to stop and think. Have a snack, let my body cool down, and let my brain breathe. No more pushing. No more trying to get one last thing done. Overworked? Maybe a little bit. But I’m in college. That’s how life goes. Maybe it’s just a night of moving a little too fast. A busy radio show with a live in-studio appearance that I had to host by myself, a quick English majors career enrichment thingy, a girl friend that desperately needed a nap. It makes for a trying evening. Sometimes you just have to wonder when all the things you do for fun become time sinks, and you just can’t seem to do everything to its fullest potential. But what can you drop? One has future potential, one pays my grocery bill, one is downright fun. Or am I just in a state of shriveled thought, my brain too weak to handle the day’s juggling pattern.