Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: REDEEM (03/03/22)
-
TITLE: A Witness | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jennifer Percell
03/10/22 -
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES
My stomach hurts, I have a headache and a general sense of malaise. It is one of those days when even the air feels heavy. I have obsessively checked news headlines for the last several days, the war weighing on my mind. Each heartbreaking story and brutal picture seems to dull another layer of my emotional reaction, as if my heart knows there is a limit to what I can absorb. I have often said people were not made for an age when all the tragedy and sorrow and pain of an entire world is delivered into your handheld device 24 hours a day. I crave the times when the needs of your own village were all you were called to bear.
In the face of all this suffering it seems ludicrous to even mention my emotional pain, but for now, it is all I have to offer. In the collective response of the world to unmitigated evil there must be a constant, vigilant witness, a declaration to the oppressed, 'we will not let you cry alone'. If all I can send are my tears, then my tears they will have, in floods of compassion.
I can remember one time that my mother-in-law sat with me while I poured out my heart about an injustice I had suffered. She held me, she said comforting things, but when I saw tears in her eyes, I knew she was truly in that hard place with me. So today, I make the effort to sit with my tears, not drive them away with binge watching, or mindless reading, but be present in the story of suffering.
As I feel my rigid shoulders give way to trembling, the tears release unspoken horrors and fears I cannot articulate. Just as I have remembered seeing Mom's tears collect on the rims of her eyes and slowly stream down her cheeks, I sense the tears that pour from the eyes of God. In this sacred moment of communion with the God who cannot abide evil, I recognize a glimpse of all I believe so deeply but rarely understand.
Our childish challenges of 'Where is God? Why isn't He doing something?' echo in my mind. But for a crystal-clear moment I truly understand the answer. Without doubt I know He is right here, and He did do something. Something so huge and unbelievable that I gasp with shock and wonder. Have I never really seen? Could my faith and trust really be so weak? Because at this sacred moment of excruciating sorrow I am shown Christ in vivid living color. The Christ who tasted not only the sorrow of the war and disease and death of 2022, but all the pain, all the horror, all the agony from the garden to this millisecond in time that is my life. I visualize a giant timeline and every tiny dot is another tear that God witnessed and acknowledged.
As I sit helplessly with my tears for the children of war, Jesus must have sat with The Father crying tears for every single sorrow of mankind. As countless acts of human courage and compassion seemed to be only drops on the scale of good and evil, Jesus' one act of compassion and love tipped that scale forever. As I was crying 'someone must pay for this evil' I heard Jesus cry, 'I did, on a very heavy cross'.
The cruel scales of justice must stagger under the weight of evil for a time, but have no doubt, every drop of innocent blood has been redeemed and every tear witnessed by the God who hears.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
Accept Jesus as Your Lord and Savior Right Now - CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.
