Psalm 139 has always been a source of great comfort for me. I have written a few times before (maybe many times) about feeling out of place through during various seasons of life. To read that God knit me in my mother's womb, to affirm that I'm fearfully and wonderfully made presses a healing hand to the wounds that life inflicts on occasion.
Keep loving each other like family. Do not neglect to open your homes to guests, because by doing this some have been hosts to angels without knowing it. Angels. Messengers. Those who will show us the things of the Kingdom.
Have you ever jumped from some place really high and there's a point midair when you feel like you really should have hit water by that point? That's kind of what these last two years have felt like. When I left Concoxions, it was truly a leap of faith. I knew that I was being called into something else but I didn't know exactly what. There has been much wandering, difficulty, lesson learning, and the testing of patience in that time. A serious test of patience. It's like I leapt and I just kept falling, drifting.
As I have been watching the Olympics these last couple of weeks, it's hard to ignore the seedy underbelly of the games. People will be quick to point out the rampant commercialism of the Olympics. Or the corruption that has been associated with IOC. Others will remind that thousands of men, women, and children on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum were displaced from their neighborhoods to build sporting venues that will likely sit vacant after the flame is extinguished. How could you like the Olympics?
Clerk: Next.
Christian: Hi. Uh...I don't know if I'm in the right place. You see...
Clerk: Do you have your paperwork?
Christian: Uh...yes! This right here. I'm not sure if I completely filled it out right. I'm not even sure what a CI-83 form is...
Clerk: Compassion Index Form 83.
Christian: What exactly is this place?
Clerk: We're here to make sure you don't help the wrong people in the wrong way.
I wonder if he was tired or angry when Jesus spoke of casting fire upon the earth. He sounds fed up. It's one of those moments when he makes us uncomfortable. When he reminds us that he is not just the smiling, laughing guy sitting with the kids and holding a fluffy lamb. Even that first statement shows that I'm trying to make some sort of excuse for him. "Surely something was bothering Jesus." We're quick to make the teacher more palatable.
The heat of the words cannot be ignored. Not here where there is a church on every corner. If you stacked them up they would touch the sky. But the words from God scorch the earth. Sacrifices and offerings can be traded for hymns, praise songs, and tithes.
And I could write a song
A hundred miles long
Well, that's where I belong
And you belong with me
-"Swallowed in the Sea" by Coldplay
Unless it's a parody, I probably could not write a song a hundred miles long. But if I wrote down everything that Elizabeth Anne Cox means to me, it would run to Nashville and back a thousand times.
Have you ever been stuck? I don't mean like just stuck in traffic. I mean spiritually, emotionally, existentially frozen in place (which, now that I think about it, there are actually times that feeling has coincided with being stuck in traffic). It is The Worst. In fact, it completely rejiggers your conception of what The Worst is. The problem is not so much in the situation. On paper this listlessness is not as bad as having your arm cut off in a freak chainsaw accident. Yet that internal recognition that something is off and things won't click into place no matter how hard you try; that feeling is pretty awful.
