did someone say God?

Did someone say God?
I don’t know what it is about god that makes people start to tremble and turn away, or give you that look … you know the one, the one that says “hey crazy lady, you seemed really normal until just now”. It’s like you just dragged them kicking and screaming into a Christian Book Store and a bunch of people started dunking them into holy water to get the burn off.

And they burst into flames.

That’s what conversations about God are like. At least around the people I know and work with. It’s just one of those “not too close” kind of conversations like religion, politics, and sex.

This weekend is one of the exceptions when we all talk about Old Glory and cry when some six year old sings the Star Spangled Banner in C Minor, then talk about how great it is to live in a country like that when the world has so obviously gone to Hell. A place that, ironically, we don’t actually believe in but probably would benefit from being afraid of.

We walk and talk, meanwhile, in a place that God has so clearly blessed – even if we don’t mean God in the real sense – even if we mean him euphemistically and hiply. In the way that children refer to Santa Claus in order to obtain presents long after faith fails them.

And I do believe in God.

The one God. The true God. The Jesus Christ God guy who doesn’t apologize for who He is, but stands tall and says things, one after another, after another. Who is and will be, and is to come. He’s the guy for me.

And in the midst of all the crazy red white and blue hullabulloo and firecrackers, in the middle of the hype that is middle America, it comes to me. What if it’s not faith or God that fails, but us.

We fail
In not appreciating
Not seeing
In standing and walking but not feeling each footstep, missing the crinkle of each toe on the sand, on the sidewalk.
Being so fucking lonely and still standing in the middle of metal jungles and still – STILL – not speaking to the people lining up and just as lonely, dying inside themselves a little or a lot at a time –
We fail
Ourselves
One another
God

Our mission

The black and white of daily life is absolved in the wash of the sun each morning. The daily reprieve, color –
He gifts us with a new dawn, a glowing twilight
The laughter of strangers
The kindness of friends

I don’t want to fail anymore
I want to fly

Please help me to fly …. God help us to rise to You

instead of bringing You down to us ...