I retell the story once written of a woman caught in her weakness. A tale of piercing words and stones clenched in fists. Yet, there is a Man who bends low, speaks:

“He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” John 8:7

Stones fall like rain to the ground, every voice is silenced. My sweet sister falls too to the ground, and Mama says, “the Word has pierced her, she is humbling herself.”

“Neither do I accuse you, go and sin no more.” John 8:11

Sister wipes her tears in her shirt, cries,

“But I can’t change. I sleep with so many men. I’m 30 and I can’t have one man. My Father and mother don’t believe I can change, they call me a drunkard. So I just drink.”

We hold her close, speak softly: “we are your family, and we believe in you.”

“Really?” She stares at us, wide-eyed, in disbelief. “But how can I change, I drink. I don’t know how.”

“His power is your strength.

You are worthy.

You are loved.”

Wise Mama speaks to her of Paul on the road to Damascus, tells her the truth that no one is ever too far from grace, that there is no such thing as a lost cause.

“Nifuna, Nifuna, Nifuna” (I want, I want, I want), she pleads.

We hold hands in prayer, pleading for every chain and stronghold to break.

I marvel at the God who does not count our sin, only the number of hairs on our head. I marvel at the abundance of that love.

Sometimes those who are serving God become the hopeless, wishing that those whom they serve could change, but lacking the belief that they can actually change. Perhaps most people, if not all, have a list of “lost causes.” But maybe there is power in the faith of friends who believe in His power. Maybe hope for the hopeless starts right here, with us, when we pursue the wholeness of others by believing in the wholeness of others. Maybe our belief is everything; maybe our faith is more potent than we ever imagined. Like the paralytic man who’s healing came when his friends insisted to lay him before Christ.

When He saw their faith, He said to him, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” Luke 5:20

Because a roof was no hindrance when the “power of the Lord was present to heal them.” (Luke 5:17) Maybe breaking rooftops is our call, and maybe the hardest rooftop to break through is our own disbelief. What if hope for the hopeless looks like a man weeping and praying in faith before a holy God on behalf of an unfaithful nation (Ezra 9), until the power of God is displayed through their repentance (Ezra 10)?

What if those around us, who are in need of change, never changed because we never faithfully believed and prayed that they could?

What if we prayed for others, genuinely believing in Gods power?

Sweet sister comes the next evening for prayers, runs up to the altar weeping on her knees. Maybe our faith in Him on behalf of others is the most we really have to offer, maybe He is more powerful than we have ever known…

“And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” Genesis 2:20

Eve; Life-giver (Strong’s concordance)

I recently started my women’s health placement and I can’t quite articulate how amazing it is to see women becoming ‘Eves’, becoming life givers, but I am beginning to understand that it means so much more than just labour, blood and tears (mostly my own).

The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Genesis 2:18

I have heard so many women wince at this verse, in misunderstanding we have withered womanhood, we have forgotten our calling. The hebrew  ‘Ezer Kenegdo’ – bluntly translated ‘a suitable helper’…but more accurately, the Hebrew word Ezer is translated as a combination of two roots: `-z-r, meaning “to rescue, to save,” and g-z-r, meaning “to be strong.” Eve was not only called a life giver but a life saver.

I have not found this life saving strength in the secularism of ‘having it all’. Womanhood isn’t about walking the tight rope of contradictions; not too fat, but not too skinny, not too loud but not too quite, driven, but not too much. It’s easy to get confused when we are bombarded with messages telling us that we are too much and yet not enough. Above and beyond all this, I see strength when I think about the selfless pangs and pushing of labour. Strength, when I think about how perhaps womanhood is the bridge where pain and love meet.

One of my favorite Sunday’s of lent was just a few weeks ago – the Samaritan woman*, once a temptress of hearts but through the words of our Savior she became so much more. Jesus spoke to her and said; “but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

Through His water, we too can become a fountain to quench the thirst we see around us.

It is no coincidence that we were created from a rib, close to the heart, enclosing it with unbreakable strength. Holding together the lungs that give the breath of life.

Woman;

An encourager of the hearts of men who have had their dreams stifled by the laughs of other men

A gentle hand to hold the fragments of men shattered by the cruel words of women

A compassionate embrace to those who are wounded in heart and spirit

A breath of air into the lungs of those who been winded with discouragement and despair

That’s who women are called to be.

“We are women, and my plea is let me be a woman, holy through and through, asking for nothing but what God wants to give me, receiving with both hands and with all my heart whatever that is.”

– Elizabeth Elliot

“To me, a lady … is gentle, she is gracious, she is godly and she is giving. You and I have the gift of femininity… the more womanly we are, the more manly men will be and the more God is glorified. Be women, be only women, be real women in obedience to God.”

– Elizabeth Elliot

“Women opened the windows of my eyes and the doors of my spirit.”
Kahlil Gibran

*http://www.antiochian.org/st-photini-samaritan-woman

Beyond race, culture and religion, we are all made in the image and likeness of God. We all possess frail hearts, we all desire to love and be loved. We all long to find safety and belonging in the world. We all hurt and we fear, we stumble into awkward moments, into our own chaos and anger. We are the same beneath these beautiful layers of skin and confusion. We are all the same kind of broken. And in our broken, common humanity, redemption desires to tell the tale of us all, because there is no one beyond grace.

Yet how many people have we deemed unworthy of grace? How many souls have we too easily condemned?

“Enemy” is a strong word. Strong enough to make us distance ourselves from it and deny that it plays a part in our lives. But when Christ spoke of enemies, he spoke simply; an enemy is someone who stands in the way of our freedom, dignity, our capacity to grow and love, someone who attacks us or our country. An enemy most commonly exists within the person whom we are avoiding.

When the lawyer spoke to Jesus asking how he was to enter the kingdom of heaven, He answered him simply; “love your neighbour as yourself.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10:29). Though the words of the Bible are clear and simple, just like the lawyer, we seek justification. Love my enemy? Who is my enemy? Surely Jesus didn’t mean ISIS, surely He didn’t mean the human responsible for my deepest hurts?

But what if the ones we name offenders can be freed to love?

‘They are people who, if loved, helped, and trusted, can in some small way recognize their faults and their brokenness and can grow in humanity and in inner freedom.” -Jean Vanier

What if humanity rose up to forgive? Like the sacred hearts of Katja Rosenberg, Antoine Leiris and Arturo Martinez. What if we extended forgiveness regardless of our hurts and our rights, and followed the sacred Word that brings all healing. For us to forgive, we must yearn for unity and peace, yearn for the oneness to be united in mind, in heart and in spirit. If we love and desire for all to be free to bear fruit, we will be a people heavy for forgiveness. We will live full and whole that we are no longer driven by our desire to be filled and prove ourselves worthy but we will yearn for the growth of all people in peace and in unity. To be a peacemaker, we must make peace with ourselves and we must make peace with those around us. We must believe that we are all a part of the suffering. We have all hurt and been hurt. When we point out darkness, we must remember to point back at our own souls. It is not easy to see beyond our own suffering, sometimes it is blinding. It is not easy to accept forgiveness or to forgive; it is a struggle.

‘ When we dare to care, then we discover that nothing human is foreign to us, but that all the hatred and love, cruelty and compassion, fear and joy can be found in our own hearts. When we dare to care, we have to confess that when others kill, I could have killed too. When others torture, I could have done the same. When others heal, I could have healed too.’ -Henri Nouwen

The truth is our enemies can often tell us a lot more about us than our friends can. The way we respond to our enemies will tell us the true state of our hearts; if we are hearts walking in forgiveness or if we walk in resentment.

Prayer for my Enemies

“Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless and do not curse them.

They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world. They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself. They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments. They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself. They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish.

Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a fly.

Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background.

Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me with an iron hand.

Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully, they have wakened me from sleep.

Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out.

Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of your garment.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me:

So that my fleeing will have no return; So that all my hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs;

So that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul; So that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins: arrogance and anger;

So that I might amass all my treasure in heaven; Ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.

Enemies have taught me to know what hardly anyone knows, that a person has no enemies in the world except himself. One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.

It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies. Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and my enemies. A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son blesses them, for he understands.

For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life. Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.”

–Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic

The “Lord is between you and me forever.”
Samuel 20:23

The day you came beside me to sleep on the floor was Tuesday, July 21st. That was the day my summer burst at the seams. You let me in on the secret of friendship;

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

That night you didn’t see me with your eyes but you saw me with your heart.

To be friends with someone is to see courage where everyone else may see weakness. To be a friend is to see someone who is trying where everyone may see someone who should be better.

It is kind, soft words in a world where they run on short supply and where all you hear are the voices in your head that insist you should not be this way, that you are not good enough, and that the only solution is to keep trying harder, to never allow your weakness to show. But that night on the floor as I cried, you saw me as beautiful still, like the tears were water for a row of lilies to bloom. And you held on to hope for me as I felt my fingers loosen their grip and slip.

We need each other, vulnerable and exposed.

We need floor moments like these in friendship. To hold a mirror with one hand that reveals all the frailties and shortcomings, but to also hold out the other hand ready to go on this journey of healing with you all the way to the Father’s house; no matter how crooked or narrow the Calvary road becomes, all the way to the foot of the Cross – our God at His most vulnerable.

Friendship allows us to see our darkness and the darkness of others as a pathway to know the Father – not a barrier to his love. Perhaps He is not threatened by our darkness, so we no longer need to with each other. Perhaps our bleeding out with those who have earned the right to hear it is the best thing for our hearts – because then we can be filled with new Eucharistic blood.

That night you were a mirror to the parts of myself I spent so long trying to run from and pretend like they weren’t there because I thought they were too much to look at.

There is something to be said when someone is willing to make sense of all you are, your internal wars, your run-down castles, your expanding galaxies and your untamed, untrodden paths. What more do we want than to be seen, to be understood in a continuum where we did not want to understand or see ourselves for fear of what we would uncover? Yet, I tried to push you away, to shut you out with walls of silence and tears, with sitting away from you on the floor. And yet, that night you did not leave, but you chose to stay when there was nothing I could offer you. You chose to fight for a ravaged heart, so you lay on the floor beside me and told me words like streams to my desert soul:

That you love this broken girl.

There is something to be said of the marks people can make on another soul, the fingerprints they leave from where hands ran along the jagged edges.

To be a friend is a lifetime of savouring every sharp point, every rough texture as lost treasure. A lifetime of leaving marks that tell stories of staying together. Staying in summers and in winters too, even when they’ve been too cold. Staying when the birds have sung and the plants have been in bloom and when the garden has run wild with weeds and tall yellow grass. The garden of a soul is not yours alone, it belongs to a man’s friends. For it takes more than a pair of hands to pull out overgrown weeds and plant a row of sunflowers in the space where deep roots of lies spread. And when there is a storm, there is no fear to let the waters rise as you stand in the rain; in time the seeds friendship’s sown will grow.

The secret of friendship sounds a lot like a fight song at times…

We sing…

As we lie on the cold hardened floor of our lives, wrapped in the thick of darkness’ untidy death grip, I will not let you go. I will choose to see you with my heart and not just my eyes. I will choose to hear your words and your tears, and I will not be afraid to walk down into the garden you call wreckage. I will choose to write lovely all across your back until the lies no longer compare. I will ensure that you remember that “you are dark” always comes with the clause that “you are lovely”. I will bring to your remembrance that even the darkness will not be dark to you (psalm 139:12). I will choose to enter into your sorrow and suffering rather than demand that you deny yourself and enter into my joy. I will choose to fight to understand your every complexity, that I may grow to know and serve you well. And for every moment your heart screams ugly, I will choose to echo the truth right back in, beauty.

Because precious sister, love is a choice, and I will choose to love you, the way Jonathan loved David, the way he loved him as his own soul. I will choose to feast on the precious gift of friendship, where our souls may collide that together we may enter into His rest.

To be seen by you is frightful indeed. To strip off my layers, let you see me raw, let you see me whole frightens me to the core. Yet with your gentleness, all my fears halt to a lie, and I realise that you know me. To be known is to be loved, and you love me so well.

We are pursuers of each other, pursuing to know the depth and height of each other’s heart. I promise to know you. I promise not to laugh at you when you are naked and like Genesis 2:25, we will stand together, naked souls, unashamed. And I will not let my words become a hollow noise, but I will entangle this promise in the actions of my daily life.

Just when I think I have tasted the best of this feast, I realise, joyfully, there is so much more to learn. More knitting, more weaving of souls.

“The resurrection is coming.”

And with those words you fearlessly revelled and embraced my brokenness as the means to victory and wiped away any shame with hands that held me close. The same shame that I used to push you away from coming any closer because I did not believe you deserved to see this mess, you deserved better from a friend and you did not deserve to carry this sadness. Yet you called it an honour. You spoke life, love, truth and beauty into the deafening echo of brokenness.

Because of you, my true friend, I am not a victim of brokenness but rather experiencing redemption through brokenness. On the floor the fear made me want hide away from it. And on that same floor you made the broken beautiful with these words:

Do not be afraid or weakened by your darkness.

To be a friend is to let someone love you the way you would want to love them. To accept you will hurt them and they will be hurt by you whilst never forgetting the commitment you made to sacrifice anything to heal each other.

I will never forget that night on the floor when you came down beside me and met me at my lowest. When you were a picture of how hope does not disappoint because of the love that God has poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. You poured out your love in the broken girl. The girl whose every dry bone screamed “you’re not good enough as you are. You need to be perfect. Don’t give up…otherwise you won’t be perfect.” In your embrace, the dry bones cried “Live!” and the broken girl had a place to let go and belong.

As St. Ambrose says, a place to “know, O beautiful soul, that you are the image of God. Know that you are the glory of God. Know, then, O mortal, your greatness, and be vigilant”. In your arms I found a place of safety. A place other than perfection’s hostage image of all the ways I will never be enough – other than shame’s iron hold and ten-tonne shield. A place other than isolation’s secrecy and muffled silence, until I could see something other than every flaw and imperfection.

We all need help and perspective in learning how to love the broken girl within each one of us. We all need friends to see and celebrate our truest self – the broken girl who is actually more whole than she ever thought because she chose to endure, to be resilient and grow.

When I could not come out of hiding you came to find me. This is the feast of friendship. A halfway home ’till kingdom come. Till we shall feast anew and fully in the blessed kingdom of God.

“What I know about living
is the pain is never just ours.
Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo,
so I keep listening for the moment the grief becomes a window,
when I can see what I couldn’t see before
through the glass of my most battered dream
I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind
and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.

So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin
don’t try to put me back in.
Just say, “Here we are” together at the window
aching for it to all get better
but knowing there is a chance
our hearts may have only just skinned their knees,
knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming

let me say right now for the record,
I’m still gonna be here
asking this world to dance,
even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet.

You, you stay here with me, okay?
You stay here with me.

Raising your bite against the bitter dark,
your bright longing,
your brilliant fists of loss.
Friend, if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other,
my god that is plenty
my god that is enough
my god that is so so much for the light to give
each of us at each other’s backs
whispering over and over and over,
“Live. Live. Live.”

Andrea Gibson

Co-written with Makrina.

“If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it is because pieces will feed a multitude, while a loaf will satisfy only a little lad.”
– Elizabeth Elliot

“Much of your pain is the bitter poison by which the physician within you heals your sick self.”
– Khalil Gibran

Hurt people, hurt people…
I am tattered with scars, scars that if you look closely, you can trace contours and grooves, like lines of a map. They are clues to a treasure, a quest I am still embarking. They are knitted together with love like a patchwork quilt, each part is unique and chosen.

Scars are never ugly because they always have a story.

A story of grace and healing, a story that says that though He wounds,He will bind up.

A story that says that though you were once sick like Simon’s wife’s mother, you too will be called to arise and serve those that healed you and those that hurt you.

“Love to be real, it must cost—it must hurt—it must empty us of self.”
– Mother Theresa

It’s true, sometimes the thorn that pierces us can leave others bleeding as they embrace us, the broken sometimes have spiky edges. But what if one day the thorn that once pierced my flesh becomes a seed that grows into a beautiful garden of compassion.What if hurt people stopped hurting people? What if hurt people could heal people?

“Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.”
Hosea 6:1

“For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal”
Job 5:18

“But Simon’s wife’s mother lay sick with a fever, and they told Him about her at once. So He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and immediately the fever left her. And she served them”
Mark 1:30-31

I have been wounded for love. I have learnt that love and pain are streams that lead to the same river, they are notes in one long symphony, they often meander and intertwine. That is why it is said that Love is as strong as death, because if it doesn’t kill you, it sure will make you bleed. To really love someone, means to suffer with them, and sometimes because of them. But, through the pain, I have cast out my blood stained robes of pride, so that unveiled and wounded, I have learnt what it means to partake of His suffering…and of other people’s.

“Through compassion it is possible to recognise that the craving for love that people feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends’ eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying… The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.”
– Henri Nouwen

God uses the broken for His glory. Blessed are the cracked, for they let the light in.

Hannah had bitterness of soul over infertility and a broken domestic situation.
Elijah felt so beaten down that he asked God to take his life.
Job and Jeremiah cursed the day that they were born.
David repeatedly asked his own soul why it was so downcast.
Even Jesus, the perfectly divine human, lamented that His soul was overwhelmed with sorrow.
He wept when His friend died.

Our pain is always with purpose, there is a always a message in the mess. Our pain is the point at which, even for just a fraction of infinity, His heart touches mine because He knows what it means to be wounded for others. But, once our wounds have healed they no longer ooze with regret and self condemnation. The wound is the place where the light enters you, where we bleed out love and healing. Our wounds scream out; its because you are glorious that these things happened to you. Through our healing, we can heal people.

I pray and ask, how can I be the oil of the good Samaritan? The Greek word for Mercy is ‘eleos’, which is the same root of the old Greek word for oil. So I pray, let our mercy be poured out on the wounded. Let us stand by valiantly, even in silence, close enough to warm broken hearts, avoiding the distance of pity as well as the exclusiveness of sympathy. Our God is not a God of confusion, so let us reflect the Divine by not adding tip or trick. Having the ability to go to the place of our own suffering and meet them right where they are , having the patience to tolerate not knowing and not saying but facing the reality of the the pain in its fullness, letting it be felt.

“The path to God is a daily cross. No one has ascended to heaven by way of ease. We know where the easy way leads.”
– St Isaac the Syrian

“If God sends you many sufferings, it is a sign that He has great plans for you and certainly wants to make you a saint.”
– St Ignatius of Loyola

Greek Mythology;

‘The Greek myth of Chiron, the centaur from whose name chirurgie is derived in French and surgery is derived in English, can help us to understand. The Greek gods Apollo and Artemis taught medicine to Chiron. Chiron was wounded by an arrow from Heracles’ bow. He did not die (because gods are immortal); instead, he suffered excruciating pain for the rest of his eternal days. It was because of his grievous wound that Chiron became known as a legendary healer in ancient Greece. Chiron later took an orphaned child, Esculapius, into his care. The son of Apollo and a mortal, Coronis, Esculapius had been spared certain death when Apollo snatched him from his dead mother’s breast just as she was about to burst into flames. The orphan was entrusted to Chiron, who taught him everything he knew about the healing arts. It was thus that Esculapius became one of the two founding fathers of Western medicine.

In 1951, Jung first used the term wounded healer. Jung believed that disease of the soul could be the best possible form of training for a healer. In a book published days before his death, Jung wrote that only a wounded physician could heal effectively. In so doing, Jung drew upon the myth of Chiron, making it one of the most fundamental archetypes of human history and modern medicine.

There is always a star in the darkness of the night;

I marvel at what our minds are capable of forgetting. I marvel at the pain we can too easily shut out, and live for years without knowledge of our own wounds.

Yet, He never forgets the wounds we bury. He never forgets the wounds we don’t even know exist.

I wade through Scripture and I read as He hears the man cry out “Son of David have mercy on me a sinner.” I marvel at His willingness to heal. I read of the moment He feels the weight of stones ready to be hurled at a woman caught in her shame. I marvel at His willingness to heal. There is no blindness He cannot give sight to. There is no deaf or mute He cannot restore.

He is always willing to heal.

There is one bleeding woman who knows this to her core. When the hem of His garment heals you, it is not reversible. It will not be revoked. This woman knows a lifetime of being socially rejected, religiously shunned and relationally discarded; a lifetime of being called dirty. Yet, just as with her, when He looks upon you and calls you “Daughter,” locks break open and strong cords of fear loosen undone. When you hear Him call you “Beloved,” this is never up for debate.

There is much power in a name; power in how our God calls us by name to claim us as His own, power in how lovers whispering each others name in the dark can embrace a souL, power in how Mary knew the gardener was actually Jesus when he uttered her name and how God changed Jacob’s name, changing his heart.

In a world that can be cruel and unforgiving, what names will we choose for each other? And what will we call out in each other by those names?

The stories of our past too often name us. They name us unworthy, they name us shame, they name us not-good-enough. But Christ, He called her “Daughter.” And His bleeding hands worked to heal so much more than just her bleeding body; He healed her aching heart. The compassion of the Healer’s heart re-wrote the story of her past, eclipsing all her fears with the hope of His Divine light. By calling her “Daughter,” the very name she longed to hear, He gave her power and worth to love herself.

Because the truth is, our words can form shields around each other for protection or isolation. And we all want to feel like we have a safe home in each other.

Yet we live in gilded cages of our own wounds. Everyday we see the manifestations of other people’s wounds, but we never see past them, we never see through. We pick up our pace and cross the other side of the road. We pick up our stones. We avoid. We “love at a distance,” and we claim honest prayers for these people. But the stench we see in others is really the festering wound in our own cage. When we are hurt by others, we hold back and run as far as we can, because loving people’s imperfections is inconvenient and messy. It strikes against our individualistic comfort. Yet no line of Scripture exists where Jesus commands us to seek our ease or even our self. We look at people’s broken behaviours and ignore, belittle, judge, look for quick cures or psychoanalyse them instead of looking into them and seeing that every broken behaviour comes from an unmet need. When the broken dare to to sit in silence together, dare to ask each other those hard questions and dare to shed tears when there are no answers and hold hands when the world’s touch has been harsh, a fellowship is born. The fellowship of the broken is the open space where wounds are exposed and unveiled. Where there is consolation to face our own true condition and strength for our life-long journey of solitude to the places of unmet needs and bad memories. There Christ is waiting to tell us the truth about ourself as the Beloved and remodel us to our glorious image.

Yet, our own fears of being hurt casts a shadow on the reality that the fissures I see in my neighbour are the exact same fractures in the flesh that covers me. Wrapped tight in this fear, we act out against love. And when we act out against love, we act out against the One Who loves us. “The love that you withhold is the pain that you carry” because to love is to embody God’s infinite love. Anything less than that is to deny His purpose for me.

But what if we loved into the dark corners of people’s hearts, not being surprised that they are in fact there?

What if you and I stepped into each other’s darkness with our simple vulnerable presence and kindness as a burning lantern?

What if we name others more than good-enough, call them wonderful and love them as they ought to be loved, as those whose value is the precious blood of the Lamb?

When there are a million and one ways a soul can bruise, we should be the million and one ways a soul sees the Light. The Light loves boldly, His tender scarred hands love radically with no bounds. Why then should we love hiding our scars, with marked out lines, hedges and fences?

There is a man, and he is lame. His wounds are his own. But when the Master comes by to a nearby house, his wound becomes the wound of his friends. With love and grace they carry him. When the doorway is full and they cannot get in, they persevere and climb the roof. Even with walls and barriers, they break through the roof. They break through with love and kindness, break through the walls he hid behind for years, they shatter through the guilt, the shame and the self-pity. Because love does; love breaks through in such a way that no one can refute. And as they lower their friend down to the Master, they watch from above; because love knows its limits.

Love does not play the Savior; rather love carries others to Jesus. Therein lies the miracle; all brokenness is a gateway to joy…

Instead of pushing others off roofs, may we lower them and love them fearlessly through their brokenness.

‘Cause my God, aren’t we all.

May we find enough beauty in each others cracks to stand close…and be near…and belong.

Healing has a name; Healing awaits…

“I’d write love poems to the parts of yourself you can’t stand.
I’d stand in the shadows of your heart and tell you
I’m not afraid of your dark.”
– Andrea Gibson

“To care means first of all to empty our own cup and to allow the other to come close to us. It means to take away the many barriers which prevent us from entering into communion with the other. When we dare to care, then we discover that nothing human is foreign to us, but that all the hatred and love, cruelty and compassion, fear and joy can be found in our own hearts. When we dare to care, we have to confess that when others kill, I could have killed too. When others torture, I could have done the same. When others heal, I could have healed too. And when others give life, I could have done the same. Then we experience that we can be present to the soldier who kills, to the guard who pesters, to the young man who plays as if life has no end, and to the old man who stopped playing out of fear for death.

By the honest recognition and confession of our human sameness, we can participate in the care of God who came, not to the powerful but powerless, not to be different but the same, not to take our pain away but to share it. Through this participation we can open our hearts to each other and form a new community.”

― Henri J.M. Nouwen

Co-written with Sandra.

We fear being alone. If we are not with people, we can’t resist the urge to hang out with our mobiles. It is when we are faced with this nothingness that we feel this deep urge to just run to anyone or anything. We want to run from this nothingness. But what happens if we confront it, we sit, we are alone and we are still. It is then that we can fully surrender to Christ in our realization that we are really nothing without Him.

It is when we are truly alone and in His presence, that we are transformed. We are to be transformed and not conformed. When people, their opinions and thoughts constantly surround us,we become victims of societies’ entanglement. Because, by the time you translate the thoughts in your head, some essence of them may be lost or just kept. We pray let the walls of Jerusalem be built; we pray let the walls around our hearts be built. But while we pray we must be patient and give the walls a chance because it is hard to put brick on brick when there is constant attack.

But how can we take this virtue of silence and the ability to be alone and use it to serve others? Done right, it should never be self-seeking, but a means to an end of loving more fully. Out of solitude comes compassion. Compassion is more than just pity; it is so much more; it is the tender heartedness in which we approach others with understanding and care. It is the ability to take on another’s burdens. It is the willingness to share the pain of others and like Simon of Cyrene, take the burden of the cross. But in order to get to that place, first we must be willing to go to that place of silence and solitude in order to leave behind our self and our pride. We need to really die so that we can be free to live for others

“To die to our neighbours means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate. Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.”- Henri Nouwen

All this being said, I am the chief of chatterboxes and socialising, I am the queen bee in the midst of a social web and for me silence is a struggle and being alone isn’t where I thrive. God just wants you to be you. God didn’t make me a chatter box for no reason. We are created to love, and we can love through our words and our time, but I think we also must also learn to love others and ourselves in our silence. We can find the middle ground, the Holy ground, and know that there is a time and a season for everything under the sun, a time to let the harvest grow and a time to be active and pull it out of the ground.

“Pure religion and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” James 1:27

“But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.” Amos 5:24

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

As a church we tend to focus on promising a hope in the life to come, but what about the life we are still living? Jesus didn’t just come to prepare us for our death, but also to teach us how to live. Jesus cared about the hurt and the brokenness in this world. He cared for the widows and orphans. He talked about unjust judges way more than He did about the afterlife. Jesus cared about Justice, in fact Jesus is justice, just like He is love. It is integral to His character.

Jesus is the Prince of Peace. He wept over Jerusalem because they didn’t know ‘the things that make for peace.’ Ironically, the world’s logic says that we must make peace, but we use violence; but Jesus defeated violence with love and peace. Peacemaking does not mean passivity. It is the act of disarming evil without harming the evil doer. Peacemaking starts with what we can change; ourselves. But it doesn’t end there, being a peacemaker also means interrupting the violence we see around us in out streets and in our worlds.

I see my Facebook flooded with pictures and outraged statuses, and we continue to chat about in our living rooms. But when will we be moved enough to actually move. When will we start becoming instruments of His peace. Because, it’s a heartbreaking fact that in the world Christians have become known more for what they are against, rather than what they are for.

We wait on God to act but God is also waiting on us. We ask God why there is so much suffering in the world but maybe God is asking us the same question.We forget that we have spent our Sunday worshipping a homeless man because we ignore him on a Monday. We are His hands and feet. We ask God to move a mountain, but God has already handed us a shovel. We need to pray and act. The world needs our protests and our prayers. The world will continue to suffer if we continue being either inactive believers or unbelieving activists. We need to pray to be people who hold God’s hand in one and our neighbour’s in the other.

We need to pray intentionally to be arrows that strike specifically, because He promised that ; ‘each man’s work will become evident’ 1 Corinthians 3:13, so let us write His promises on the walls of our hearts and pray that He reveals to us His perfect preplanned work for us. Maybe we can’t build a wall, but when each brings his brick, brick by brick,the wall will be built.

“C.S. Lewis wrote: We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.”

Who, in the midst of the preoccupation of hell, would have the energy and generosity for the larger battles? What might it mean if we resolved to abandon every petty, small, and unworthy battle this year? What if we resolved to give ourselves fully to larger things that matter, to things of God and his kingdom? In fact, in a world of so much acute suffering, hurt and need, for what purpose have you and I been granted so much?” Gary Haugen

“Blessed are they who maintain justice, who constantly do what is right.” Psalm 106:3

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” Proverbs 31:8-9

Prayer

God please comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. Let us be disturbed to the point where we cannot accept serving at a distance but that we become active about making a difference.