This summer has been a whirlwind, and the list of things I wanted to accomplish has collected dust unfinished. But it has been beautiful and full of life to the extent that I can hardly catch my breath. I am overwhelmed by the grace of God and simultaneously burdened by the world around me. In moments I am divided between unspeakable joy and crippling grief as I see a wondrous creation marred by sin, purposeless and finite, grasping for greatness in every place but where it actually resides: in the arms of the great Creator.
I have spent this summer, playing and triathlon training and researching. Thinking, far more then I care to, but far less then I should and slowly forming all my thinking into a tangible point. I’m taking it slow and breathing deep as I sort through an onslaught of information. It’s a task that both horrifies and excites me coupled with a heavy feeling of responsibility. But what I can say so far is echoed in my intentions for this blog.
The name for this blog is largely explained in the tab “Why ”Oceans Never Fill’; it is taken from Ecclesiastes, a book I adore that speaks more into my thoughts every day. Nothing is new, we make the same mistakes as those before us, and humanity has not changed nor have our sins. At the heart, everything is the same and has never changed; and won’t until this thing we call ‘time’ ends in the face of eternity. We are finite and in our smallness we continue to miss reality; we continue to beg for redemption from ourselves and from one another but we insist we maintain the vanity of putting ourselves at the center. We seek truth and reality but refuse to part with our delusions.
I try to avoid politics, I hate them, and I am wearied by politicians, and promises of utopia and salvation from misery for humanity, because no man, regardless of his power, prestige, and even good intentions can rescue us from our reality of hopelessness. No man but one, that is. He accomplished salvation in his first coming, and his second coming will bring the final knock of the hammer of justice. But until that time, until that moment when every tear is dried and the hunger and thirst of the righteous and suffering is finally satiated, I am the one called to feed the hungry, defend the weak and speak truth in the midst of a world that is hostile to mercy and real love.
Because real love lays down its life for another, real love is mercy on the humble and justice served on those who oppress and murder the weak. Our nation (and countless other nations thanks to our funding) abuse power, targeting women in crisis who are wracked with fear, and murder the weak in the name of rights, and many Christians have looked on silently. The world is preaching that a woman’s body is her own so she should sacrifice anything that undesirably invades that, it preaches this to women at the cost of their souls. Because sacrifice is the heart of life and to lay down one’s desires, dreams, and even life is how we love, it is how we were loved first and it is where we find real joy. Women are sacrificing their children to the gods of career, reputation, convenience and fear and they will find the gods will only demand more, that they will perpetually sacrifice to them, these gods who feed off self-indulgence and fear. But there is freedom from these gods of horror, there is a God who holds all things in his hands, who offers a child as an opportunity for us to die to ourselves so that we might live. Instead of asking us to sacrifice the weak he begs us to sacrifice ourselves so that we can find life and love and joy in him. This Creator God offers freedom from the endless treachery of a life spent seeking ourselves and he often uses the unwanted and inconvenient to show us this joyful reality.
The end of this summer will bring a conclusion to my research and a series touching on abortion, feminism and ultimately the painful state of humanity in light of who we were meant to be. Because too long have I stood quietly as my sisters are deceived into a decision that will haunt them the rest of their lives.
So, in case you thought my writing has been forgotten this summer, it hasn’t; this is simply a project that demands much more time, thought and courage then I expected.