Overwhelming Lack of Hearing

Today my word is often.

So often am I moved. So often am I reminded. So often am I overwhelmed by grace and love and the capacity for humanity to use these things. So often I am disappointed when they don't - when I don't.

There is a weight of responsibility that comes with having a child, a conviction that bears down on the soul. How do I want Rory do grow up? Comfortable and content with the life he has, untouched by the difficult and dirty things of this world? Or do I want him to passionately seek a life of sacrifice, marked by compassion and love and giving? You should already know my answer, darling reader.

I want my son to be so much better than I am. Sure of himself and his beliefs, whether they mirror my own or take on an entirely different look. I want him to be ever fighting for his convictions rather than hypocritically tearing himself apart internally (see his mom).

"We cannot carry the gospel to the poor and the lowly while emulating the practices of the rich and the powerful." Jen Hatmaker

Why are we entitled to the life we were born into? It was purely blessed circumstance that placed me in a middle class American home and someone else in the slums of Mumbai and another in a compound of former soviet Russia. I haven't earned my first world life. How could I have? How could any of us? The more I consider these things, I become less angry at the wealthy and more sad for them. For us. I am beginning to believe that our daily indifference, our Starbucks coffees and kitchen expansions, is what is killing us from the inside out. We give, but still we waste. I am guilty as any. We should enjoy the little things in this life, but we should recognize that they are only that - little things. We should never allow them to distract us from what matters.

"Compassion is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pity for those who fail to make it in the upward pull. On the contrary compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there," Henri Nouwen

Often: many times, frequently, in many cases. What if Christ meant it when he said that we must go to the poor and the outcast? What if he truly meant that we must give up everything to follow Him? What if those weren't hyperbole or metaphor? Then I am lacking. Even in my obnoxious quest to better my world, I am so inadequate. I have not heard the words I have read over and over, but merely listened without obeying. My heart is broken for each man, woman, and child who suffers. So many suffering needlessly! Even the smallest portion of what I have capable of giving them a better life. How have I not already gone to them on hands and knees with tears on each cheek, apologizing for my lack of compassion, my lack of hearing. I have often been indifferent. That is someone else's calling, another will care for that need, others will do that work. Too often have these been my words, rather than the words that have already been given to me.

I apologize for yet another moment of overwhelming conviction, but they are what plagues me during these days. Often. So often. And my heart is broken for every person I have hesitated to aid, to love. It physically pains me to see such hypocrisy bleeding out of me. I desire a sacrificial life and continually ignore the most simple sacrifices that present themselves to me. It isn't about one big gesture, but a life filled with small opportunities to serve. And I must take them as often as they come. I am beyond exhausted by all of this, so I will leave you with some food for thought.

"May my privileges continue to drive me downward toward my brothers and sisters without. Greater yet, I am tired of calling the suffering "brothers and sisters" when I would never allow by biological siblings to suffer likewise. That's just hypocrisy veiled in altruism. I won't defile my blessings by imagining I deserve them. Until every human receives the dignity I casually enjoy, I pray my heart aches with tension and my belly rumbles for injustice." Jen Hatmaker

"Suddenly the terrible dangers of lacking nothing became clear to us. Having everything just because you can is a trap. It numbs and blinds the human spirit. It can separate us from our calling and our privilege as Christians in this needy world." Mike Yankoski

"In a world overwhelmed with words, sometimes the most powerful communication is action fueled and inspired by love." Mark Scandrette

"You who are God's servants are living in a foreign country, for your own country is far away from this city-state. Knowing which is yours, why do you acquire fields, costly furnishings, buildings, and frail dwellings here? Anyone who acquires things for himself in this city cannot expect to find the way home to his own city. Do you not realize that all these things here do not belong to you, that they are under a power alien to your nature? ... Acquire no more here than what is absolutely necessary. Instead of fields, buy yourselves people in distress according to your means so they might have more and you might have the same." Hermas

"If I am crazy, it's because I refuse to be crazy in the same way the world has gone crazy." Peter Maurin