Brokenness.
Welcome to the world.
This week exposed us on many levels to the brokenness of the world – past and present, in St. Louis, our country, and around the world. In the process, I’ve been reminded that I’m one of the many messed-up pieces of the picture.
Maybe the world’s not that bad. It’s better than it used to be, right? We don’t have slavery anymore, everyone can go to school if they want to, there’s equal opportunity laws and affirmative action. (Not that I think any of these things are bad! Great things!)
One of the main actresses in the play from Saturday night shared her story during the play. Gang-raped at age 15, doctors said she would never be able to conceive children, so in her depression she fell hard in to alcohol and drug use. She married and was blessed with a miracle child, a beautiful daughter. She loved that girl, until one night, a drunk driver barreling down the road struck them head on instantly killing her beautiful eleven year old daughter, also putting her on the edge of death. She has fought hard to begin walking again.
Broken.
St. Louis schools are in horrible condition. The teachers kept passing this kid (lets call him James) all the way up until third grade, even though he didn’t know how to read. By that time he felt so stupid that he couldn’t read that he dropped out of school. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it.
Broken.
In our fixed game of Monopoly, whichever piece you chose determined how much money you started with, how much money you got for passing Go, and what kind of rules you played by. The people who had picked the privileged piece got to go whenever they want, they didn’t have to pay when they landed on the properties of the poorer people. They didn't have to go to jail when they drew that card.
But that was just a game.
Even in the game, as my friends who were playing the different characters, we could see sin come out. How a little money, a little power, turns into a lot of greed. How a little injustice turns makes you angry… or soon enough apathetic and complacent.
That’s me.
Selfish, ignorant, and worst of all complacent and apathetic. I knew coming in that my heart wasn’t nearly as broken as God’s was for the hurt of injustice and the cry of the oppressed. And I’m just praying that as these things continue to become real this summer, that my heart will be molded by my maker into the way He originally designed it, before it was twisted by sin.
At the play Saturday night, the main character fell from the corporate world to land flat with her butt in a Metro seat. One of the friends she developed over the next months eventually confronted her with how she had been living her life in isolation, not letting anyone in, not letting anyone help, letting pride and fear get in the way. I started crying at this point because I realized that is a huge part of my brokenness too. I’ve been in a funk this week, and I couldn’t figure out why until the play last night. Most of you know me as crazy, outgoing, sometimes bold, loud-laughing, people-loving Kristi. Well that’s not what I’ve been showing people this week. St. Louis threw me out of my comfort zone, naturally. That’s what I was expecting and hoping, but I was not expecting these effects. Where I don’t talk… I would rather sit in my room or outside by myself than talk with anyone, where I have to force myself to laugh when other people are laughing, where I don’t feel needed in the group… out of my zone. At school, that is my territory. I know what I’m good at, I know what to do. Here, I instantly put up walls and didn’t want to trust my team. Not good. That’s my pride and brokenness in me.
But it also reminds me of something that Brenda said in A Credible Witness. She said that it’s so important to make people feel like they are needed. We can’t just invite them into our lives or into our fellowships where we don’t need them there. It wasn’t that people made me feel unwelcome, or that they did anything specific. In my head, I just felt unnecessary. Praise the Lord He spoke to me through a couple teammates who didn’t even realized how much it meant to say that my laugh was awesome or whatever. Anyway, that’s a big part of what’s at the center of me. Pride. Impatience.
I am broken.
And yet how blessed I am. As we worked in the sun and the dirt, beginning to get dehydrated as we cleared weeds in the Etzel neighborhood, one of my teammates shared her thoughts that as she was thinking about how hot and tired she was, she was reminded that we were blessed to be able to hop in our air-conditioned cars to go to our air-conditioned rooms and hop in the shower, rehydrate with ice water or lemonade and sit down and relax with friend for the evening, while many of the people living in these apartments couldn’t do that.
The world is broken. I am broken.
But that’s not the end of the story.
There is hope, there is life. Jesus is alive and at work in me and in my team and in this city and in this world. He’s taking people who have been scarred so deeply by this world, and reaching in to the places only he can touch to heal them from the inside out. He’s reaching into my heart in tons of different ways, to heal hurts, change my sinfulness. That actress from the play who fell into drugs and alcohol? The prayers of her mother and by the grace of God and the work of His Spirit, she came out of that, to a renewed outlook on life. Even after the loss of her daughter, she chooses to praise and thank God. She chooses to glorify him in her life.
Jesus is equipping and sending his people into neighborhoods like Etzel to live and love alongside the broken. He’s asking His people to adopt children who come with the baggage that the world has laid on their shoulders, and to show them the easy yoke of Christ (Matthew 11:28-30). God’s heart is for the oppressed. Seriously. That’s one of the things nearest and dearest to his heart. Our God is justice. He is mercy.
What am I going to do about it? I’m following Christ… or so I say? Christ walked into the bad parts of town that everyone else avoided. He touched the people that most people took a couple extra steps around. Will I follow Him there? My first step is to Etzel this week. Lets see where he takes me from there.
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