Then There Was This Girl Who
wouldn't Go To Change With The Girls In The Change Room
but When They Finally Made Her
they Saw Birthmarks All Over Her Body
she Couldn't Quite Explain It
they'd Always Just Been There...
mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm, Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm
mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm, Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm
-MMMM by Crash Test Dummies
I saw a dead body this evening.
A leg hanging out of the car parked in the restaurant parking lot. Police tape around the vehicle, door open, yellow plastic blanket covering the body in the drivers seat. A dead body slumped back in the seat...I continued to drive by...wondering, praying...feeling a sting in my heart.
I've been close to death before...close enough to catch it's numbing virus in my fragile and growing subconscious. I've stood near it and could feel it's cold breath on my young soul. Suicide is visually terrifying...it freezes you in a numbing, fever like way.
I've seen bloody water...razor blades...and drugs emptied in hopelessness, they were mixed together in a moment that forever seared itself into my tender heart.
How can life be so bad that death seems better...try to wrestle with that as a teenager.
I've held the hands that have tried to end the life of the one weeping. I've seen scars, scabs and tracks. I've heard the sobs of the molested and the confessions of the molester. I have seen the tears of the damned and the rescued both echoing with each falling...with unforgiving tragedy, nihilistic suffocation's and brutal tales that slow your heart until you can hear your heart beating...too loud.
I've seen into black eyes that have no pupils but have dilated into a haunting plea for rescue.
I've seen devils...in the face of a young woman who squirmed within a moment of eternity that beckoned for deliverance. I 've seen apparitions...that haunted me, reached for me and terrorized me in the night.
I've watched a man cut his flesh to draw blood at the urging of dark music while the pounding of nails was heard...evil moments that shouldn't be.
This is the world that the barbarians live and die in...the world that God calls us too. A world that will make you bleed and suffer. it will bring you to the end of yourself...you will find that in yourself you are unable to do whatever it takes. You can not save. Not only that, but those you seek to save will often turn and crucify the very hands that seek to save. Nails for compassion...only His love can fuel a life that can endure that kind of insanity.
Everyone wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to go to hell. But you can only get to heaven through the halls of hell. If you follow Jesus...then you must walk the paths He travelled...the way leads right into the bleakest, the dirtiest, the vilest and most abhorrent seedy places of sin and suffering. Will we dare follow Him as He truly walked?
The sad fact is...more people will have more of a problem with the picture I used for this post than the fact that the content of the post is true and taking place right in their own neighborhoods. God forgive us...
6 comments:
This post was powerful to me. agree with you 100%.
HAIN has your sermons link on our forum board. One of our members wrote and has really been touched by your sermons! Thank you for sharing those.
That was awesome Eric. Really, really awesome.
Peace brother.
Later,
Mike.
P.S. The picture fit.
Mary & Mike,
Thanks...Praise God if any of this stuff helps anyone, encourages somebody or inspires fuel for the fight. We all need it for sure.
That post was raw and haunting. A reality check of the pain and evil very much real in the world in which we walk.
I guess I'll be the 'bad' one that God needs to forgive. I loved the part of the blog that spoke of what it means to follow Christ and walk as he walked. It spoke to me big time I think that the picture you choose is troubling, sadistic looking, flat out disgusting, and completely unnecessary. I would have enjoyed the messege more if I didn't have a nauseous feeling in my stomach from that aweful picture.
Kayloni...never afraid to speak your mind :) one of the many things I love about you. I was sure I would get some responses liek yours about that picture. I agree with you, it is all that you said...except the "completely unnecessary" part. I chose that image because it captured the disturbed and haunting feeling that I was trying to communicate. I ahve felt that place, seen it and suffered from it too. It is reality to some. A reality that is brutal, dark and tragice for sure. There is much to be said for not looking on that part of life under the sun....but there is also a place for dwelling in the house of the dead as Solomon puts it. Is it over the line...yes probably for most. I confess I spend a good deal of my time there. I live in that palce that Jude talks about in his book, when he says we are to travel even into the fire to save some.
That fire is not a pleasant place...I know that most people assume that "whatever is lovely, pure, noble, good, excelent and worthy of praise'' is a scripture that speaks to issues like this, but I do not. There are tons of places in the bible that if held to that interpretation would have to be cut out of our bible. The torture of Christ is lovely from a ceratin piont of view, not in a sadistic sense but in a redemptive one.
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