Tonight I sat through worship practice, drained. Rather than feeling filled up like I usually do, it was the opposite. Instead of enjoying the company of those around me I was irritated.
All my frustrations came to a tipping point as I watched people pour lighter fluid on a snake. One of the realities of living in Swaziland is that deadly snakes are a real problem and we need to kill them. As this snake crawled toward us that night, it appeared to be a black mamba. Sadly, I watched as my squad mates proceeded to light the creature on fire. Nonetheless as the animal curled up in what I could only imagine being immense pain, I couldn’t help but feel anger towards our actions and sorrow for this snake. This animal was just as much God’s creation as the moon and stars we marvel at each night. As I look about where I am in the world, I find nothing but immense brokenness.
The world is broken.
I’m broken.
In this realization, I feel as though I’ve hit my limit.
Something I’ve always hated about the “christian culture” is how afraid we are of this reality. We are terrified of the fact that despite how much love and grace we flood our lives with, we can still be immensely broken deep to the core. Our world is crying out because it is broken. We sit around trying to fix it and fix each other when the truth of the matter is, we can’t.
I used to believe I could fix things. I thought I was going to jump into this world as some sort of spiritual fixer-upper. I thought I could put biblical band-aids on the world in hopes that it would be enough to stay afloat in a sinking boat.
Along the way, I’ve learned that that’s just not how things work. People need God, people need Jesus, and sometimes people just need to hurt. In that hurt, often times the most someone needs is someone else to sit with them in the moments where things just suck.
I really don’t know where people have created this idea that upon accepting Jesus we have to suddenly start skipping through grassy meadows and farting rainbows. If I were to take a best guess, I would say it probably came from a poor understanding of what joy was. I think we fall into the trap of believing that joy simply means happiness, and that we get to veto any other emotion because a fruit of the spirit is joy. It’s silly and absurd.
Was Jesus not filled with joy when He made a whip and kicked out those who were defiling the temple? Was He not filled with joy when He wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus? Was He not filled with joy when sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane? Joy isn’t simply smiles and giddiness. Perhaps these are an aspect of joy, but they aren’t really the full picture.
Joy isn’t an ignorance of emotion, it’s knowing that despite the tears I’ve dropped here on the steps of an empty church, there is victory in the end. The hurts I experience now are real. Moments of exhaustion, anger, and frustration are tangibly apart of the picture God is painting. We don’t always see this though, because the story God is telling isn’t finished.
“Though the tears may fall, my song will rise, my song will rise to you. Though my heart may fail, my song will rise, my song will rise to you…while there’s hope in this heart I will praise you Lord.” Rend Collective
At the end of it all, hope is the promise we cling to and it’s a hope that transcends the void of brokenness and suffering. It’s a hope that boils over into the depths of our heart. It’s because of this hope that we can see that moments of hurting are okay because the story doesn’t end there.
I’m broken.
It’s not a great place to be, but while there’s breath in my lungs I will praise the Lord.
