Finding Momentum

I was at Haste House prayer this morn­ing and in the mid­dle some folks started cry­ing for the bro­ken and lost and oppressed of the world. Half-sobs, salt-blister tears and only what can be described as cries to a One who promised to be pow­er­ful and mighty and just. I wrote them down (I hope they don’t mind) because they were fright­en­ing, they were for­eign and so beau­ti­fully and earnestly not-about-themselves (I know there’s the per­fect word for this float­ing around out there).

They were weep­ing because they had been there, watched kids cling to their legs, wit­nessed unjust fac­tory con­di­tions, heard vil­lage women whis­per sto­ries of geno­cide, read sta­tis­tics about the 6000 kids con­tract­ing malaria daily, a con­ti­nent dying of AIDS, a sin­gle man loi­ter­ing by People’s Park or hud­dled under the pil­lar of the Unit 3 park­ing garage.

Is the bur­den too much for their God, is their God doing noth­ing? Their hearts hunger to be bro­ken again and again like His is.

I wrote down their prayers and tried to mouth them myself. They trickle out of my throat but never make it to my heart. Man, I still don’t know what it means to have my heart break for any­thing. It’s a tricky lit­tle guilty feel­ing, I decide, and tell God to do it any­ways, break my heart unequiv­o­cally for some­thing or some­one other than myself.

At that moment all I know is this pound­ing desire to know God’s heart so much to be weep­ing His salty tears on a Sat­ur­day morning.