My heart breaks for a world in which seven-year-olds are given a two-hour lesson on recognizing and reporting sexual abuse in Sunday school, a world in which what appear to be trash bags littering the grass are actually homeless men bracing against the cold while callous masses step around them. My heart breaks for a world in which a man who should be a grandpa resting in the lamplight of a cozy living room spends his time on a bench in a park where he mimes his days of guerrilla warfare to passerby with tears in his eyes and no words on his lips, a world in which a sweet lady with white hair and deep smile lines is so lonely in a big warehouse that she affectionately squeezes young girls she barely knows and tells them of her life story in a language they cannot understand just so that she can feel any sort of heard. My heart breaks for a world in which a boy younger than myself walks across two countries, leaving behind all family and all material possessions, fleeing a home that has turned into a prison, a world in which giving him a simple piece of paper on which I had written song lyrics touches his heart in an immense way because it is something to own. My heart breaks for a world in which an elderly man comes into church, accepts Jesus, and goes back out onto the streets to sleep rather than staying in the homeless shelter because he is so trapped in addiction that he cannot go one night without a drink.
But if my heart is breaking, imagine the heart of the Father. From my place in the clouds, situated on a mountaintop, I look down on a city that is characteristic of a world in pain. My heart yearns for reconciliation, for a restored world. My heart yearns for the temporality of such hardships to be known by the tormented, for the hope of Jesus to be known among all the nations, for a world where hearts have no need to break.
