// From the Archives //
Yep. I know it’s been a while. I’ve missed writing personal blogs so much, and honestly I just make excuses for not writing. But something has been on my mind this week with Hurricane Harvey wreaking havoc in Texas. I could not help but share it with you.
This month has been chaotic in our country; one would think the world is ending just by reading celebrity tweets. From the disgusting display of extreme racism in Charlottesville, to the moment of awe and wonder of the Solar Eclipse that brought our people together, to Hurricane Harvey that now seems to be trying to win an award or something for all the flooding records it is breaking. Someone give him a trophy so he will get the heck out of there.
I have felt heaviness in my heart more through all of this than I have in a long time. Just a lump-in-your-throat, can’t breathe kind of heaviness. And then there are the moments when I sigh a sigh of relief because I see that we can make it through once again.
Charlottesville. Just saying the word makes me feel nauseated. The heart of God broke in two that day. I truly believe that. We sat by and watched a nation, a people that seemed to be divided down racial lines, ideologies, and political parties. And then it occurred to me after seeing countless people rise up and renounce the utter evil of white supremacy that maybe we aren’t so divided in the first place. Maybe there is something that ties us together. Maybe we can set aside political affiliation, religious affiliation, and other differences and just come together as a unified people to stand against evil.
What was it? What was it that tied us together? Could it be that we all have something in common? Something bigger than ourselves?
Solar Eclipse. I mean what!? In south Louisiana, we only were graced with a partial eclipse, but it still took my breath away. My coworkers and I felt it. A sense of awe and wonder. A pull. I even felt emotional, like I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to bow. I wanted to praise my Maker. The pull was undeniable. The pictures I saw were incredible. Oh, my Maker was showing off. His glory was majestic. People joined together from all walks of life all over the country to be together, and to be in awe together. A sense of hope swept over the nation.
Then fear set in. Uh oh. Put away the solar eclipse glasses and get out the flashlights and bottled water.
Hurricane Harvey was redeveloping, and it was going to be bad. I couldn’t stop watching the news. I could not take my eyes off that massive storm. In the past few days, my heart has broken. Shattered over those people who have been displaced, homeless, hungry, and exhausted from this monstrosity. I have felt myself getting angry at this thing. Move Harvey! Go somewhere else! No one wants you here! Just like I felt toward those white supremacists…
And then beautiful people have risen up in the midst of this terrifying disaster. They have risen up and rescued and served and have put their own lives as risk. We have all come together once again to donate and do whatever we can to help those in pain. In deep, deep pain. Some have said through this that there is hope in humanity. There are good people in the world.
What is it? What is this pull? What is pulling us all together? What is this common link?
I think many are wondering this. How can we be so divided, and then in times of need and fighting injustice we seem to share something very special. Something that seems other-worldly, almost god-like.
Then I read this tweet from Beth Moore. Profound. “A dear friend just prayed something so true: ‘God, the reason we want to help rescue people is because we are image bearers of the Rescuer’.”
We are image bearers. We are made in the imago Dei, the image of God. Every.single.one.of.us. We were made to have hearts of compassion and love and care for our fellow mankind. We were made to see injustice and fight for it. We were made to want to rescue, because God is the great rescuer. The redeemer. The one who restores. We were made to be together in community in the sweet, solar eclipse moments of life and in the dark, scary Harvey and Charlottesville moments of life.
We were always intended to live in peace and harmony with one another, but we screwed that up. And now we all have something else in common. Sin. Mistakes. Hurtful ways. Some of us even look down on others because their screw-ups at least are worse than ours. But we are all the same.
We are all made in the image of God. And that image we all share has been broken by sin. Selfishness. Pride. Arrogance. And every evil thing you can think of. It has been broken like a mirror.
The only way for all of us to truly come together is for us to understand that we as humans cannot save this world. We cannot even change the world. We think we can, and we stand up against evil. But then in the secret places of our minds, we are just as bad as the evil we fight against. We cannot do it alone. We must have the image restored. True peace will never be possible without the image being restored.
And the only one capable of restoring the image, the mirror, is the one it reflects. The Maker of heaven and earth and humanity. The one who created the mirror in the first place. A broken mirror cannot fix itself or any of the other broken mirrors. The maker of the mirror is the only one capable of that.
Well goodbye innate goodness and self-sufficiency. Goodbye tower of Babel. Goodbye pedestals and self-actualization.
But it makes sense right? We come together, and then something rips us apart again… whether it is our own evil or the evil of another. It is the constant cycle of humanity. We cannot fix this problem. History shows this over and over and over again.
Oh that we would come together on this crucial, life-saving point. That Jesus is the one who saves. The one who can truly redeem this mess we have all created in some way or another. He is the only hope of the world. He is the mirror-maker.
May we all someday come to fully reflect Him again.
In love. In justice. In hope. In peace. In kindness. In gentleness. In self-control. In patience and long-suffering. In bearing one another’s burdens. In compassion. In grace and forgiveness and second-chances. In truth.
So he created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27
But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which you were indeed called to one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Colossians 3: 8-17