Hear I sit, listening to rain, feeling the heat of the room seep into my face and arms, trying to change my skin, trying to break open the pours in my skin so they will sweat. Does anyone understand how one could stare God in the face, know He is God, and scream NO into his face? Notice the lack of direction, the aimless gait that runs ramped in the western world. See the inner pain that stretches across the west? Can you understand the worry, the fast paced blackness, and the icy nothingness the western world knows?
The love, respect, the joy of life in the west are drowning in a pool of money and fake happiness.
Love. Where is the love in our society? I ask myself wherever I go. Visit a retirement home, look around, and ask yourself: "Is there love here?" Well, is there? Go into a nice quiet home, where the family eats their dinner in separate rooms of the house, or all together watching television. Where is the love there? Go into a church, where people greet each other with a cold smile and then get into a new air-conditioned car, drive to a fancy home and yell at their neighbor and kick the dog. Where is the love? Go into the cities, the towns where you can find people from across the world. Some people are excited, some young, some lost, and many struggling to bite the hand that helps them.
The thin man with white hair sat on the same bench on the same corner at the same time each day for years, and no one ever asked about his broken family. This man sees no reason to live, no reason for anything. To him one day passes and the next passes the same way, but there is no purpose to the work of his hands, no reason to work, no love for him to hope for. To him things just happen, and life is a dark street of sadness.
Then see the man in the orange boots, an erring in one ear, skin as dark as night, his brown eyes full of a sadness impossible to describe, and yet he smiles. He says he is happy, says he's homosexual, that he's been that way since he was little and yes he has HIV, and yes that he's happy...but under all the yeses and all the smiles, he's sad. Inside his heart there is a burning pain that goes so deep....so deep that no one knows it. He has become his pain. No one can see past his lifestyle, no one can see past the cheerful orange boots, past the words, they don't see that he is a man who just needs love.
This is a world full of people, and yet so many are lonely. There are hundreds, thousands, millions of people, all together, all there, talking, laughing, and yet they are lonely. They have no real friends. All is surface, light talk. No one asks if you are sad, and if they do, the other person would not answer truthfully anyway because it's not polite to cry. This is a world where people seek something, anything to fill the loneliness inside. But whatever they try, the loneliness only gets bigger, until all they see is a black hole staring them in the face. Then they ask, is this my life? Why oh why is it like this, where are my friends, where are my family? Why didn't fun make me feel good? There is only one thing that fills the loneliness, one thing that makes life bright, one thing that makes life sparkel in the end instead of the black.That one thing is Jesus. Without Jesus, life is meaningless; it is empty, full of wishes that don't last. Only Jesus makes things real. Jesus is the only thing that fills the blackness, the only one who can truly make people shine with joy and know what life really was meant to be.
Most of the things I have to say are not pretty, and are very challenging. I challenge people to question, to argue, to let down barriors, to love, to understand people's pain, to talk, to have real family, to know who Jesus really is and to follow him truly to the ends of time. Will they listen?
I am a doer. When I talk, I talk simply, but write I harshly. I do not try to convert everyone I meet on the street within one minute of the meeting. I seem normal, but I've had people ask, "why are you so happy?" Why do you do that? Why are you like that? "You sparkel" "You are different, why?" The answer is, that Jesus is my master, and He has given me eyes to see and ears to hear, He has given me fingers which to type, and a mouth with which to speak. How many people know all the parts of me; the part that is always watching, always observing, the part that is always screaming because the world is a place of such violence and hate. How many really see the part of me that cries out to the world: "Where is the love? Where is the love?" And how many know how much I really love the answer, that Jesus is the love, He is here, He has always been here, and will forever be, and His that love will never end.
Then I remember and my mind turns, and I remember the way God speaks of people. He calls then MY people. "They will be MY people and I will be their God." I make clay people, and they are MY people. Not that they belong to me, but that they are MY people. As in I made them, so they are mine, and even if they are crushed and go out of existence, I still remember them because they are MY people. It's really hard to explain... Make something, make it beautiful, make it the best you can, put your entire mind into it. When it's done, you know exactly what's wrong with it, the problems it has; a crack here, too much black here, a wrong note there...But it's yours! You made it, and because of that, it doesn't matter what's wrong with it.
It's like a child who has a toy that he loves very much. He sleeps with it, cares for it, takes it everywhere. He can even be heard defending it's ragged state: "It's my bunny. My bunny." Not said in a mean way, but said as if it explains why he loves it and why he takes it all over the place with him. It's his, and that is enough.