Again

Dear Eugene,

“Life is too busy and complicated for me to hear the cry of every person in my community. As a matter of fact, I struggle to find time to even hear the cries of my own family. If I had to listen to the cry of everyone in New York City, you may as well ask me to listen to the sound of every blade of grass growing and to the heartbeat of every squirrel. The noise would be deafening on the other side of silence.”

One time a councilman, agonizing over the pervasive pain in the city, painted the above picture that is all too real.

Today a mom told me she needs to distract herself from the unbearable burden that is her daughter, and I echoed her cry with a confession of my own, that sometimes I felt like I could stay in my cave of silence for the next ten years and might actually try it.  I also confessed I have a huge stockpile of intellectual arsenal to justify my anger and frustration and thus shutting-off, and I could probably get away with still appearing upright in front of man.

But God would take none of that bullshit, I told her.

How am I so sure about this?  The truth is, deep down, we all know.  Brokenness is not meant to be left unmended.  Does a little girl need to give the world a fuller articulation to defend her inconsolable crying over a broken doll?

Yet how cunning, evil the human heart is, to buttress our self-righteousness with Bible verses and even doctrines, asking the Justifier to justify our wrath, our indignation, our resentment, our forsaking and renouncing of another human being who is no more sinful than we are ourselves.

So, in a way, we all know what God, the Creator and Redeemer, really wants.  And in another way, none of us know enough of it.

I thank you.  You are the pastor who has called me out of my cave again and again and again--and if I have to keep saying again for every time you have called me out, this letter would make a very tedious Guinness Record.  All I want to say is, Alex is not Alex without Pastor Eugene.  And I told my kids already I want the truth in these very words to be spoken at my funeral.

Yours, Alex

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