Oh Heavy Heart of Mine

Somali Pirates.

This is what grieves my heart today.

I watched the movie Captain Phillips yesterday and was smacked in the face with the stark reality that there are bad people out there who have no choice but to be bad.

But my soul whispers to me that they're not actually bad.

My soul feels their hidden goodness. It feels their desperation and fear. It so deeply feels their sense of hopelessness.

And then I feel hopeless.

Why do I have so much? I have everything. It is easy for me to be good. I don't have any worries. I have every need met on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's no real sacrifice for me to do good things.

But people with no hope, people with no protection, no livelihood, no money, no job, no family, no LOVE - they have no choice.

Be bad or die.

That's the choice life gives them. Life says go out and steal and hurt and kidnap and destroy and take what is not yours and assert your power and live to make others fear and you'll survive. Otherwise, stay meek and humble and weak and die. Die in desperation and hopelessness.

This is what is seems like life gives them. And it does not seem fair. It seems so wrong. 

And I can't help but wonder why God would allow it to be that way. It's not fair that it's so easy for me to be good and so easy for them to be bad.

If I'm good, people praise me and bless me and love me. If they're good, people take advantage of them, kill them, destroy them.

Where is my God? Is he near to them? Is he close to their broken hearts? Does he hear their helpless cries in the night? Does he have mercy on them?

Does he love them? 

And I find myself praying in desperation that God will just make it known to me that he isn't absent from all of this. I have to know that he has some sort of plan through all of this. I have to know that he loves those people and that his heart breaks the same way mine does when it sees their scared, lonely souls and their acts of wickedness.

I need to see his eyes and see the tears welling and the arms reaching out, trying to save them.

Oh, my God, will you open my blind eyes?

Oh, my God, will you make known to me your love for bad people? Will you make known to me who you are? Will you show me your heart and your face and your eyes?

Oh, my God, where have you gone?

It feels like you've left us here alone. It is so hard to see you anywhere now. All I see is selfishness and ignorance and greed. All I feel is brokenness and helplessness and confusion.

Oh, my God, won't you save us?

Won't you put an end to our suffering and teach us who we should be? Won't you provide for us so that we can serve you? Won't you heal our broken hearts?

Oh Jesus, won't you lift this heavy heart of mine? 

I'm Probably High

Do you ever wake up in the morning and just think, "Man...how did I get here?"

No. I don't mean like, I was drunk and blacked out and ended up somewhere totally random and unexpected.

Although, if that's you...well...I'm sorry. That's awkward.

:)

Okay, but seriously. Don't you ever have days when you wake up and literally have no idea how you got to the place you are? I wake up and wonder how things got this way. How did I become this person I am now with these thoughts that I have and how in the WORLD did I get in this situation?

Even weirder than that - do you ever stop and wonder how you got on EARTH? (Do I sound high?)

I mean, I get that whole thing about how I physically got here - the stork brought me. K. But how did EVERYTHING get here? How do we have such intense and intricate thoughts and feelings? How are our emotions so tied into our physical senses? How can we communicate with such detail and effectiveness?

Folks, there is a God.

There's someone who had to have made this happen. I mean, I can't fathom any other possibility. Science cannot even come close to explain the complexity of HOW a lump of mass in your skull can produce unique ideas and thoughts. That doesn't "just happen." That's not some cosmic accident.

We were created.

Okay, I don't know what you think about that....but it freaks me out. I mean, it's also kind of comforting. But I just wonder where my creator has gone. Is it true that I was created for fellowship with this God but mankind's sin has separated me from that?

Or have I just been abandoned?

I legitimately don't know the answers. I don't understand how I'm supposed to find out.

But something deep within me whispers that my creator has not forsaken me. Something way down inside insists that I still have a purpose and it still involves my maker.

God, show me who you are.

Maker of my heart and my brain and my spirit and all that lives around me, make yourself known to me.

Open my blind eyes and please forgive me for being so stubborn and only believing what I want to believe. I'm sorry that we've become so confused and selfish and hateful. I look around and see so much pure and untampered beauty and I can't help but think that the world was created to be much better than what it is now. I see glimpses of perfection and can't help but imagine that perfection is what once marked every created thing.

But my eyes are cloudy and my heart is heavy. The world entices me in its momentary afflictions and empty promises and I forget to think about the possibility that maybe I could be missing the whole point.

Creator, show me my point. What do you want me to do? Who would you like me to be?

How can I know you?

Please, oh please - tell us how you love us.

We're Measuring the Wrong Thing

I'm a Social Work major at University of Arkansas. It's the perfect major for me - I identify so deeply with the mission of social work and really feel like it's what I'm supposed to do. The main goal of social work is to provide all humans with resources - emotional, physical, etc. - that they need to have the life they want. It's about using my unique connections, skills, and gifts to provide someone else with opportunities that they didn't even know existed. It's about provided support and encouragement to broken, hopeless people who are often alone. It's about letting people know that they are never truly on their own. That's something I can devote my life to.

But I have a bone to pick with Social Work.

Actually, I have a bone to pick with the world.

The one thing that I hear over and over again in my social work classes is that certain privileges set you up for success. This is so true. If you have your own car, if you have an education, if you have a family that believes in you, you're chances of "success" SKYROCKET. So, as a profession, Social Workers want to help help people who are at a natural disadvantage because they lack these things.

So, the ultimate goal for people is.....success. I always hesitate to use this word because I honestly hate it. It's a filthy, sticky, deceptive word. It promises happiness but delivers emptiness. It wears a mask of prosperity while devouring its victims with whispers of discontent and jealousy.

So this is my beef with social work and with social work and with the world: we're measuring the wrong thing. We measure quality of life with a ruler of "success." Sometimes we even try to make the ruler look really nice by saying success includes family, friends, and community. But personally, I think that even the best ruler that the world has come up with is a cheap con of what life should really be measured by.

Matthew 6:33 says "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."

One thing I did not realize when choosing Social Work was that, though in my mind my religion fits perfectly with the mission of Social Work in a unique way, there is really no room for religion in the workplace. Well, that's what they say anyway. As a social worker I am ethically bound to keep my beliefs to myself, to protect others and preserve diversity.

But when you have a treasure worth more than gold, how can you keep it to yourself?

I've been thinking a lot lately about how the world would be perfect if every single person had a relationship with God and sought after the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Oh, but I guess that's how the world was actually created in the first place, huh? And I guess that's what heaven will be like.

Anyway, the point is, I can provide someone with all of the resources in the world and help them create a successful, happy life but it will truly never be enough. Because, as I've blogged about before, when we chase our own joy, it ALWAYS eludes us. Jesus said to keep our life we must lose it.

I truly believe that the field of Social Work would CHANGE THE WORLD if they came at it from a Christian perspective. Instead of teaching people to chase success, teaching them about their God-given kingdom mission and showing them how to seek God! Because is a life with a family and a big house but a huge gaping hole in your heart really successful? So instead of chasing physical and emotional comfort as an end-goal, we should use these things to make the race after the kingdom of God a little easier for our brothers and sisters, with the end prize being God himself. And then we would find TRUE success, true delight, true joy, and true treasure.

"Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Oh, how you love us.