It can hit anywhere--on a sunny, blue day with birds chirping, flowers blooming, friends laughing, or a day with deep thunder and bright lightening. Without warning, I'm overcome by the evilness in this world.
It's not so much about anything personal, nothing done to me.
Then again, it's always personal, this evilness in the world.
I imagine the children who never got to be children, the dancers who were maimed, the architects whose hands were cut off. Did they ever know that they were children and dancers and architects? I look at my nieces and nephew and wonder who will protect them.
With Job, I cry, Why? With Habbakuk, I cry, How long?
Christus Victor, the early church father's said while staring the lions in the mouth and hanging upside-down on crosses. Christ is victor over the evil that held us hostage. For the hope set before us, said the author of Hebrews.
And I realize that this is the heart of the book I recently began writing--what do you do with all this evilness in the world when you fight and you fight and you fight, and people still take lives and exploit the weak and crush the innocent.
Thanks for sharing your compassion. To be honest, it doesn't come naturally to me, and I often need to be reminded of what I am glossing over and hardening my heart towards. Thanks for softening me a little today... your words and the music were perfect. :)
Not being melancholy by nature, I usually avoid those thoughts, but occasionally even I am struck by them. I love love love what John says, "In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world."
Chrstus Victor indeed.
(well, John told us that Jesus said it)
You definitely touch on the difficult reality of life. It's sometimes hard to reconcile a good and loving God with the evil in this world. And yet, in some ironic way it teaches me even more so how good and loving he really is.
It never ceases to amaze me how beautiful and evil the world can concurrently be. The beauty gives me hope, even as the evil threatens to suffocate. And I agree that somehow all evil feels personal; I never considered that before, but somehow when I see evil it feels like an affront.
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