I am sitting at my computer, and it is nearly 1:30 in the morning on a Monday. I have to be up for work in just over 4 hours, but my mind is unsettled, and my heart is heavy. It seems that these are the times that the words I write come to me the easiest. I don’t need to think about what to write, it just comes from a place outside of myself. For years I have called this voice my muse. One that puts ideas in my head that are so poignant that I simply cannot rest until I transcribe them.
Usually, these impressions come when I am feeling a certain way about something that is going on in my life or the life of someone close to me, but tonight it is different. Tonight, this heaviness weighs on me and I feel it coming in a way that I have not felt since 9/11 2001 at around 9:03 AM. At the time I did not know why I felt so burdened, just that something that touched the very heart of God had happened. It was as if a great cry of despair had risen from the core of the earth and rang into the very halls of heaven. I began to weep without knowing why and I knew that all I could do was just pray. I didn’t know what I was to pray for, just that I needed to intercede for many souls at once. Within minutes I knew why when the news came on the television.
Tonight, I have that same feeling but this time I know what it is and why. There is a great divide opening in the spiritual realm and it is ripping this world apart. Yesterday I witnessed a woman just like myself but much younger, going through a moment of intense emotion. I don’t know what the cause was, but my heart felt her pain. I’ve been feeling a pain myself over the last few days and I haven’t been able to really put my finger on what it was or why until now.
There is a certain demographic in this world that is hurting in a way that many of them have never felt before. It is a group who have been ostracized and vilified by humanity and they have been told that there is no place for them in the kingdom of God.
They have been told that they are an abomination and excommunicated from places of worship. They have been accused of crimes they have never committed. They have been beaten for sins that were not theirs. They have been called blasphemers and pawns of Satan. They have been murdered in the streets and left for all to laugh at and mock while they lay bleeding to death. All because they were born differently than the human majority.
They are me and I am them.
I’m not one to wave a banner and protest loudly when I don’t get my way. I am not one that has any desire to get on the so called “Woke” bandwagon and try to force an agenda down anyone’s throat but there is this divide that is growing between people like myself, but that revile any person of faith and those that declare their righteous piety and claim that we are the very personification of evil and perversion. This division is literally tearing at my heart, and I am feeling that I very desperately need to build a bridge.
This is where the heaviness most sets in. I don’t know how to build that bridge. I don’t even know which side of the chasm to start on. Which side has the easiest ground to build from? How do I build from both sides at the same time? Who will help me build this bridge? And even if we build it, how many will meet in the middle and work with the other side to fill in this gaping wound in our world?
These are questions that deprive me of sleep but also push me to at least start somewhere, so I will start right here.
God has allowed me to be this way so that I could learn patience and tolerance for those who are different. God has given me this compassion so that I can feel the hurt from those who have been marginalized by society. God has given me a vision of what this world can be and God has given me a heart that is willing to listen to Gods direction and a soul that seeks to see this world reconciled through God’s love. Now I must pray for the right place to start.
I think I will start on my knees.