Hi everybody, this week has been a lot better. It’s been a lot easier to hand my anger over to God and ask him to hold it and though some issues are still coming up, I feel like I’m over the worst of it. Glory be. Still, I’m coming to you from a place today of being just a little bit heavy. Emotions seem to have their own weight to them and though they’re not negative right now, they are just kind of . . . heavy.
So what’s the next step right now? I’m going to open my hands. Yes, literally. It’s a posture not only of giving, but of receiving. Right now it’s me offering Jesus the opportunity to come take away all of weight I’m feeling. He says his burden is easy and his yoke is light. He also says ask and you shall receive. Of course those verses have to be taken within context, but in this moment, these are things I am carrying that I don’t have to be carrying. So I’m asking him to take them from me and for some reason when I physically open my hands, I can feel that burden replaced by a lightness and a joy within me.
It’s such a small thing, it seems so inconsequential, but it makes all the difference to me. And I guess that’s what makes it consequential.
I’ve found the same thing to be true with the difference between truth and lies. When I am constantly being bombarded by all the little things Satan likes to whisper in my ear, even when I know what truth is in that situation, often times I need to tell someone, to say it out loud even though it sounds ridiculous. Even if the person I’m talking to tells me the exact same truth I’ve been telling myself in my head, it helps me. It helps to hear truth out loud. It helps to hear it from someone else. It seems like such a small thing, something I should be able to handle on my own, especially when I have to open my mouth and let something out that feels so elementary. Like, “I don’t feel like I’m enough.”
It can happen in any situation. And like I said, I know what the response is to that. “Of course you are.” But for some reason it’s taking those little steps that seem to make all the difference.
In other news, we went to S21 and the Killing Fields, two of the many sites where thousands of people were tortured and murdered because of the paranoia and brutality of one man. There were lots of horrific facts to take in and sometimes it was overwhelming in the face of the beauty of the land in front of us. Trying to imagine the scenes and the atrocities that took place there didn’t really feel possible. But I’m glad we went.
I’ve been to Dachau, one of the German concentration camps outside of Munich a few years ago and though they’re on different continents, though several years separate these genocides, there is something similar in both cases. Both in Germany and in Cambodia they have this saying, “never forget.”
So as crazy as the world gets, as awful as the mind and inventions of man can be, the flip side of that just as crazy, but on the opposite side of the spectrum. One side comes up with horrors. The other comes along and says, “how can we make sure this never happens again?”
I’ve met a lot of people this year, many of them random strangers. What has surprised me most about them is how kind, how nice and helpful they’re willing to be to someone they’ve never met before. Most people are not Pol Pot or Adolf Hitler. Most people want to help you get to your bus station or find point you in the direction of home if your lost or just say hello and share a smile with you.
So as horrible as these crimes against humanity are, I think there’s also a lot of hope out there too. True, it doesn’t make the news as much as the bad stuff, but that doesn’t mean it’s less important or nonexistent. What a happy thought. 🙂
I think that’s all I have to say about that for now. Thanks for listening.
Love,
TL
