Posts Tagged ‘injustice’
advent: three
For the vision is yet for the appointed time;
It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail.
Though it tarries, wait for it;
For it will certainly come, it will not delay.
~ Book of Habakkuk, Chapter Two & Verse Three
I am angry. Just plain angry. Fired up. Frustrated. With my unfinished self. With rude people. With the mad, mad, mad world.
And I’m weary. Weary. Beaten. Breathless. With worry. With the fight for justice. With battles that appear un-win-able.
I’m sad, too. Sad. Broken. Gut-wrenched. At the oppression in my soul. In beloved ones. In a harsh and inhumane humanity.
It seems the opposite of what I should feel this Christmasy time of year. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, after all. But I think I will embrace the reminder of crushed spirits, smoldering wicks, our great and wild need, and my fatal cut. I need to hold my breath in for a moment, hold my breath with the whole of creation, with universes, galaxies, suns, oceans, mountains, birds, trees and man.
Hold my breath. Because that is what we, all of us – stars, turtles and fetuses – are doing whether we know it or not. And we’re holding our hopeless breath for Him, for the completion of what He brought with His birth: the hope of an appointed time when all weakness and failing, striving and death will be fully redeemed.
But, for now, we are in a room where we wait – sometimes angry, weary and sad – knowing that this is the moment before the extraordinary thing will come to pass. And, as Buechner says it, the name of that moment is Advent.
2 Commentsfreedom’s sacred cause
“Never forget justice is what love looks like in public.”
Relegated to the furthest corner of the movie-plex, Call + Response, a new “rockumentary to expose the world’s 27 million most terrifying secrets,” played for its lone audience member: me. In the haunting solitude of the dim theater, the weight of human trafficking crushed me. Where the tragedy of modern-day slavery is concerned I still have so much to learn. I am undone, even before the movie begins, sitting alone in the cinema’s unusual silence.
I want to cry.
I want to rage.
I want to shout,
“I’m here for you, little girl. As you are pulled away from your father and mother who had to send you away to “work” because of their poverty. As you are raped tonight in some dingy Asian brothel. As you are deceived, defaced, dehumanized. I am here, at this movie, for you. I don’t know what else to do. Yet.”
I find myself overwhelmed by the injustices that break the heart of God. What am I to do with 27 million slaves? 27 million faces? 27 million stories? 27 million souls? All I have are questions and more questions as I sit in the dark, trying to wrap my brain around the hideous numbers.
Is this really possible?
With all our civilized-ness and enlightenment are we seriously no further along in our understanding of human value and worth?
Are we honestly making this mistake again?
Tonight, I don’t know the ways to awaken freedom. I only know it involves me. And it involves you.
We may not be able to storm into the brothels in Cambodia and rescue eight-year-old girls from sexual predators. We may not be able to swoop into India and carry away the millions of men and women whose lives are considered less valuable than cattle. We may not be able to free little boys from becoming war children in African tribal conflicts.
But we can start where we are. Here. Today. Mindful. Aware. Listening. Willing. Sacrificing. Enlisting. Hoping. Believing.
Believing that injustice does not have the final say. Believing this too shall be made right.
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