assembly required

Today I went shopping for a new computer chair. I went to three stores before I found one I liked. The guy who got it down from storage asked me if I wanted someone to assemble it for me. I said no, that wouldn't be necessary. Then he tried to sell me a 3-year extended warranty; I said no, but thanks anyway. It was not a very eventful day I guess, but on the way into the last store there was this man. I don't know what ailed him but something surely did for he walked very slowly, more like a shuffle than a walk. He was going into the store just as I was so I waited for him and held the door. He was grateful and I said it was no problem. The carts for the store were on the inside and he seemed put out by this so I went and got one for him. It was really no trouble and took me only a minute of time. I didn't think anything of it then, I was so focused on finding a chair, making my purchase and getting on with it.

It only took me ten minutes to put the chair together after I got home. I like it and am sitting on it write now actually...

Though the activities of my day have been in no way taxing or troubling, I am weary, I am tired. I think this tiredness started last night. It was something someone said, something I wish I didn't have to think about or know. I awoke from sleep this morning feeling unrefreshed with this knowledge from last night gnawing a hole in my heart. I tried to deny that what is bothering me is bothering me; I tried to push it from my mind. What bothers me seems to bother no one else. Yet alas! all my attempts are to no avail because I am troubled.

This thing that bothers me isn't life shattering. It isn't the cause of the upheaval in Egypt and it isn't going to help the Haitians; it is not an uncommon thing or terribly unusual. Maybe that is why it gnaws at me because this little thing that bugs me is a big thing but the world is filled with so much trouble you have to pick your battles; this is like the straw that broke camels back. There is so much wrong in this world, it is SO MESSED UP. Disease, cancer, environmental destruction, violence, unrest, oppression, death, animal cruelty - are just a few messes.

I sometimes feel as Christians either we talk too much about the problems of the world or not at all. It's like we are optimistically senile or depressingly pessimistic. We offer no balance and our fast paced world doesn't really help. It is always "Go Go Go" "Faster Faster Faster"; we're not really encouraged to stop and reflect on where we have been and where we are going.

I am not always happy, I mean life is not always a rose garden of delight for me. There is good and there is bad. There are things that I hope never change and things I want desperately to be different. I am finding the courage through the encouragement of a dear friend to hope and to dream again - I am thankful.

"I can in the end only speak for myself." That is what I was going to type before I realized the bull of that sentence. I don't speak for myself anymore, when I speak, I speak for Christ. (The terror of those words for today alone I have cursed at other drivers, lost my patience, thought unkind things... Juliet said of Romeo "...what tongue shall smooth thy name, When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?" - that is my feeling. If I who claim to be God's child fall so short of representing him faithfully what then? Ahhh but the Spirit whispers that my hope does not lie within my own righteousness but in He whom I love who loves me more. I'll never understand Him; I yearn and tremble to see Him.)

I have identified myself with Him and more importantly and firstly He with me; I have been baptized into His terrible death and reborn into His resurrected life, all to the glory of God. May I never take for granted the meaning of such a sacrament. May I never bring shame upon His name with willful unrighteous deeds of unbelief, the opportunities for which are legion. May I reach out in humble love to my sisters and brothers fallen along the way; may I forgive them like You forgive them, receiving them in kindness. Your assembly is required Lord.