Such evil, such Love

At the moment I am listening to Simone sing her new treasured baby doll to sleep. Made up words to the familiar tune, Away in a Manger. Everett is asleep. For the next foreseen hour I can do whatever I want after a busy morning of shopping for the boys' birthday dinner and other things which help the household operate.

But my mind is weighed down. I could hardly go to sleep last night after watching a t.v. show about cocaine. Following real people around who are addicted to crack cocaine. And how a jungle valley in Peru grows and makes 50% of the world's cocaine. The production of cocaine, since it uses various toxic chemicals, has ravaged 10 million acres of forest in the valley. Not to mention the runoff seeping into neighboring villages and towns.

The three people they followed, documenting a week or so in their lives, were not even human beings. They were skeletons, ghosts, who at one point used to be people, but now are shadows of those people - stealing cell phones out of people's hands and making a run for it - prostituting, not going any lower than $30 to do God knows what - just so they can go home and smoke crack. Then having to smoke weed because the high from the crack was too intense. They all said they couldn't believe that this is what became of their lives, spending all day to make a buck so they could buy cocaine, then do the same thing the next day and the next. But they had no intention of stopping the cycle even while they recognized the insanity.

A couple weeks ago I read an article that took me so off guard I was weeping by the end of it. I don't even want to give the hyperlink to it because it is so appalling. In short, it was about a man who was caught recently in Kirkwood, MO, a suburb of St. Louis, torturing a mentally handicapped young woman. It had been going on for 5 yrs before he was caught. He wasn't the only one doing it, either. The details described in the article still make my stomach turn.

And there are things in my own life, on my own scale of distance from God, that scare me. I am inpatient with my kids, I am unforgiving. I see the tension even in my kids. What path will they choose today? To stay close to me and Micah? To choose life and peace? Or turn their backs and let their dark sides take over. They might not see it as a conscious choice, they are so young. But as an adult who is hyper aware of such things, I know that some days I just take the easy way out. And usually end up paying for it.

A human being's capacity for evil is alarmingly huge. It knocks me over. It paralyzes me.

But our capacity for love and beauty is just as big. Right? Listen to your favorite song. That is an amazing, transcendent moment in which it is hard to believe anything like addiction or torture exists. Watch your kids sleep. Watch the sun rise. Laugh with your family. Walk downstairs and hold a warm mug of coffee in your hands. And on a bigger scale, people devote their entire lives to helping and loving people who suffer. How can such Beauty stand side by side with such despair and godlessness. What would those three people who are addicted to crack be like if they had been given the same opportunities I was given? What if I had been offered their same opportunities?

God weaves His Spirit in and out of the fibers of this world, through the molecules and cells of every person, longing for them. Grieving for them, cushioning them in ways they can't see, but would notice if He wasn't, shining on them such Bright Light and Warmth if only they would look up.

We are all so connected, a billion parts of the whole. If I look at "hopeless," or "lost" people and see myself (because really I could be just one bad decision or bad parent or bad neighborhood or bad friend away from being right in their shoes), surely God looks at them and takes it a step further. He sees who they were meant to be. He sees who they are going to be when we are all drawn up together in the infinite Love of God, brothers, sisters, children of the Father. He has the great privilege of forgiving and loving the wayfarer and scooping him into the Everlasting Arms. Hallelujah.