Trust is a fragile thing. It is easily trampled under foot, until the microscopic shards leave you ripped and bleeding.

Trust is placed in many places and many faces. It may be placed in godly leaders in our lives. We trust their words and leadership. When we trust we often look to them as if that they are the Church, and when trust is broken, all their words come into question. But reality tells us that men are all fallible and the Church is more than its leadership, it is Christ’s flesh and bones, it is the teaching once delivered to the saints. Trust cannot alone be put in godly men and women around us. Trust must be primarily in God, who is infallible, who is our Truth.

But what is our Truth?

Where are we and what do we believe?

In what teaching do we trust, to what Truth do we hold on to?

Our allegiance is not to men and women who teach, but it is to the Word, the only Word that is Truth.

It is not uncommon to bite the hand that feeds us. Truth may feed us for some time, while later, in our pride, we may become our own truth. I recently discovered that I was master of my own ship; was once taught how to sail, then later made up my own way to tread through many waters.

I have seen war, and I have heard rumors of war between leaders amongst the churches. I don’t know politics, but Church is the politics I have been forced to learn. Church is the place I have hurt from, and I have hated, countless times to remember. It is in this place I have witnessed unforgiveness, injustice and anything but grace.

Yet the Church is home to the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Truth. The Truth that outshines any darkness. And in that Truth I realize, it is man whom I have hurt from, I have hated, and I have witnessed unforgettable sights. All the while the Church stood firm, rooted in the teachings it has held for centuries. But often, as a response to my own hurt and frustration, I not only reject the perpetrators, but I reject too the teachings the Church is founded on, as if this will be the soothing ointment to my wounds. Bitterness has never healed a wounded heart, and rejection of Truth only leads us further from the Truth. Out of hurt, it is easy to run, like the unfaithful lover who cannot choose to stay, who cannot choose submission, who cannot choose to fight for Truth. When I reject the Church, I choose a war of emotion and grief instead of love and peace; I run to my own beliefs, separating myself from the community of the church, choosing to look upon the bride of Christ with judgement and condemnation.

“A sect is separation, solitariness, the denial of communality. The sectarian spirit is the direct opposite of the Church spirit.”
-Fr Georges Florovsky

May we cling to the Church, that the Spirit of God who is in her may rid our hearts of a sectarian spirit. For, Truth is not a fragile thing.

Truth is absolute.

So I choose to stop rejecting her. I choose to stop being my own God and making up my own truth. I choose radical obedience to the Truth. I choose to stop running.

This is the Church.

Here there is hurt. Here there is healing.

We need to love her ripped and bleeding.

You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in you, in the Lord, that you will have no other mind; but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is.
Galatians 5:7-10

To the hurt, 

Please know that healing is not a momentary, glorious event. It is hard, it is long, and it is a process. While these words are truths I believe in, there are days that it still hurts so much and I lose hope, thinking I am right back where I started. Healing is a journey, may we walk this long road together.

Check out Part II

To those who have ever loved,

To those who have ever lost,

To those who have never forgotten.

This is for the broken ones who have learnt the lessons of love and faith the hard way; even in imperfection there are notes of freedom, flashes of beauty and redemption.

This is an open letter to those who have emerged from relationships with a masterpiece of scars splattered on a canvas of remorse. This is an open letter to those who never felt wanted and pursued. This is an open letter to those who have watched from afar as one after the other of their friends evaded the pain of unrequited love while they have felt stung and stuck in the same place. This is an open letter to those who have been lied to or cheated on. This is an open letter to anyone who has made a mistake in the arena of love and to the generous lovers, the brave ones who refuse to be defeated and will rise again to enter the arena one more time. There is a reason your heart is the size of a fist, keep fighting, keep feeling, keep loving.

To the lonely,

When did you feel lonely?

I know you crave companionship and intimacy. The art of human connection is to be unashamed and unafraid in intimacy. The freedom of Adam and Eve – the intimacy in union. It is not wrong to desire that. You are not somehow faulty or defective. Believe that God’s will is such that no sin, ignorance, or miscalculation on your part can thwart. His love is so strong and so inseparable from us that not even our own blindness or foolishness can hinder His perfect love. Lonely hearts know they have need, and heaven knows that all we need in this life is need. A need that says I need the shadows of Your wings and the arms of Your embrace. Maybe you have realised now that He is the one that always stays when all else fades away. He is the one who always picks up the pieces. Lonely hearts know that to be known and found is freedom when it is found in the all-knowing Creator. Let the sense and the thoughts of the light shine upon us and let us not be covered by the darkness of pain that we may deeply praise Him. He is our Hiding Place, from our hidden places of ghosts and secrets that make us sick. In the light of the morn there is no shadow left to hide other than His and when the rays beat down we can emerge from the shadow days. His mercy crashes in and endures forever.

It’s easy to feel like a fraud when you understood the temptation to fill emotional needs through external attachments. The struggle is going through the very lesson you thought you knew so well, that you could avoid. Remember that struggle you go through is to pump healthy blood into the body of Christ. One blood courses through the veins of the one body and nourishes them all. If anything can comfort you is that your struggle is for the sake of many. For the church. St Paul’s heart of service was to suffer for the sake of the body. And even though we think we are strong, we are weak for the glory of God. God offers himself that way, life in place of death, holy desire replacing deceitful desire, life planted and growing and filling all the hollow of a soul. We are the weak ones, but this is not bad news. Isn’t brokenness the fertile ground for seeds of hope, the low place where Jesus meets us? We are the weak and we were made for hope and until we find our True Hope, there is no true strength; He renews the strength of those who hope in Him. God’s love is our hope. Keep your eyes on Him and if you can’t see His love fix your wandering eyes and bind it to Him once again.

May our afflictions, our seasons spent waiting patiently to be fixed and free be used to fix and free the body knowing that we have received comfort from the God of all comforts. May you be the unashamed comforter, held and put back together in His perfect love. There is nothing given away that Christ cannot retrieve from the abyss, for though we make our bed in hell, He is there too. He is always there, His eyes fixed on ours, placing our trembling hands on his own pulsing wounds so that we might believe Emmanuel – God with us. He never left.

“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.” Henri Nouwen

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3 NKJ)

Jesus is not stingy with His comfort, light or strength, especially when we ask. In stillness and quietness we forge an opening to the healing fire within.

As Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain said, “Unless we maintain contact with our inner depths, unless there is a still center in the midst of the storm, unless in the midst of all our activism we preserve a secret room in our heart where we can stand alone with God, we will lose all sense of direction and will be torn in pieces.”

“Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all” Nicole Krauss

You are loved