Good morning…
By 10:00 am last Monday, three innocent 9-year-olds and three loving educators were killed in the safety of their small Christian school, before police put down the 28-years-old suicidal shooter. Then, by 10:00 pm that very same night, forty migrants (most from Guatemala) were left to die in their locked retaining cells as fire ripped through a detention center in Juarez, Mexico. It was one of the deadliest migrant tragedies in years.
I was impacted by both tragedies. The first sparked this comment from a friend, “Is there anywhere that pain doesn’t touch?” The second went quietly unnoticed by most, but I spent my nighttime hours crafting the Soul Collage cards above, a deep form of prayer for me, as I held in God’s loving care the nameless victims and their families.
I remembered seven years of Lovett’s spring break family mission trips, as we served in Guatemala twice. The poverty. The cinder block walls of a school we helped to build. Visiting the families in their dirt floor homes as they dyed wool from their sheep and, on a large handmade loom, wove exquisitely patterned fabrics to sell at market. Then my thoughts were drawn back to our women’s mission trip to Juarez, Mexico in 2008. We spent five days building Sunday school classrooms for children beside a tiny church in that dry, dusty town. I remember hammering, erecting walls, and securing shingles on the roof by day. At night, we were treated to lovingly prepared homemade tamales steamed in banana leaves and filled with rice and spicy meat. I remember the long, spirited, worship services, the singing, the dancing, the praising God in foreign tongue. The hearts of the people were so generous and the dark eyes of the children, so hungry.
The three cards I crafted gave a visual voice to my grief.
First, the enemy of God subtly slithers into stoic people, creating chameleons who blend into culture, wearing a disguise of control and abuse of power. Yet God’s loving light and organic growth enter into even the ugliest parts of our humanity.
Next, with all of creation, I lift songs of lament and prayers of praise to the God who holds, who helps, who heals us all, from now into eternity. Finally, I truly believe that it is the vulnerable children, the powerless victims, the unjustly persecuted who hold up a stethoscope to our chest, that we might learn to see with God’s eyes, hear with God’s ears, and love with the heart of God.
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up a mountain and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them:
“Blessed are those who recognize they are spiritually helpless.
The kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
Blessed are those who mourn.
They will be comforted.
Blessed are those who are gentle.
They will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for God’s approval.
They will be satisfied.
Blessed are those who show mercy.
They will be treated mercifully.
Blessed are those whose thoughts are pure.
They will see God.
Blessed are those who make peace.
They will be called God’s children.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for doing what God approves of.
The kingdom of heaven belongs to them (Matthew 5:1-10, GW).
Praying out our collective grief, we lift into the healing light of God the hurting, the humble, the helpless. The kingdom of heaven belongs to all of us, here, now, and forevermore.
…Sue…
