Heavy

I feel heavy these days, heavy under the weight of the world's pain. I watch as despair curls and licks and winds its way near me, looking for a way to settle in. It's filled with lies, I know, the precise opposite of the hope that we know we have, but it's tempting to let it in all the same.

Money, sex, power, that trifecta of human apathy. Every day we hear more of the many ways in which we value a gained dollar, a passing moment of pleasure, a bit of control, over the person next to us or across the world from us. Of what concern is the good of our neighbour, wherever in the world that neighbour might live, in the face of selfishness and comfort and what's in it for me? There is such unimaginable horror in the things we do to each other, to all of creation.

Too often we look at one another and fail to see a created soul, loved and valued and of great worth. How many new ways will we find to objectify and oppress, to exploit and pervert, to treat people as commodities and opportunities? Money, sex, power, in endless permutations, big and small, and the small all the more insidious for their seeming unimportance. Endless, endless.

And here we are, remembering the death of the One Who was to free us from all this sin and death and darkness. Die to defeat death, to conquer sin, to pave the way for our salvation, to lay down His life in showing us what Love looks like in action, all the varied and familiar ways we talk about what was done and why and yet - and yet. And yet today I struggle to see it. He has overcome darkness but I see little else.

This is why the world needs every reason it can find for celebration, for joy, for expressions of love. Let us see that there is good, too, and beauty and love and compassion and togetherness and all the things we need and long for. This is why we write down gratitude, why we seek opportunities for joy and celebration, why we shine light and be light and bear witness to light. This is why we push back the darkness again and again and again, reminding ourselves of our own selves, because we are not immune to the things that bring us to tears when we see them in others. This is why we try to do a little good each day, wherever we are, in whatever way we can.

But today I simply feel heavy with the weight of all that breaks our hearts in this world - and perhaps that's as it should be on a Good Friday. Shed tears for the evil, the horror, the brokenness, and the apathy. Light candles and repent and wait, wait, let despair wash over only for a moment and then remember hope as Sunday dawns.

Such is the already-and-not-yet of God's Kingdom Come.