God Hides With the Poor

What if everyday we lived as though we were on a missions or volunteer trip?

When I returned from Ethiopia I had the strangest feeling walking into the Washington D.C. Airport.  I literally felt this physical and mental weight on me because of all the noise of the American life.  My friend Gwen sent me a link to a woman’s blog who is working in Guatemala with Compassion International.  Her words spoke right to my heart.

I think of it again, how it’s only in the emptiness that a song can sing, how in the hollow of the dark places, the notes resonate, reverberate, carry.

How our lives full of cluttered ease, muffle out the songs. That when we go to the places that strip life back to its barest essence -- of courage and love and raw, unmasked pain -- our hearts feel again, beat again, hear again the haunting music of a beautiful, bleeding humanity.

Maybe it's this: God hides with the poor and in the pain and we can only witness Him at His most beautifully creative work in the places needing redemption.

Maybe we are only at our most beautiful work in the same places too --- the places where we don't hide behind the distractions of stuff, where we finally empty our hands of all our possessions and idols and come to God empty and ready. The places where we can make art with tears.