Today I am Writing: On Making it Right

I am on my way home from the store when I see her, the woman standing at the stop sign. She holds a board that I can't fully read, but I make out enough: She has a family, they need food, gas, money. The intersection is a bad one, and my schedule is tight; I don't stop, but I think of her for the rest of the night. I think: Even if I'd stopped, would the 20 I had in my wallet be enough? Where the need is great, it would take more than this to make it right. (I think: I wish though, that I were the kind of person who simply stopped.)

A few days later we pray with a man who is in so much pain he has lashed out and hurt others, badly. I see Jesus standing next to me the whole time, on a white horse. He closes the ranks; He's not going to let this young one leave until we get to the bottom of some things. When we do, I see Him rejoice. I see Him ready and raring to go, holding out a sword to this young warrior, turning His horse with so much to show him. Forgiveness occurs, the young man's entire countenance lightens. Still, I think; the hurts have happened. Nothing can take them away completely, nothing can make them right.

I drive home and tell Jesus just how much I love Him. I see Him swing me up behind Him on the back of that horse. He unclenches my fist of "I am so angry, so untrusting," places my palm over the warmth of His heart. In these days where my anger is seething over all of the things that no one can make right, I see that He is navigating the crowds to get me where He wants me to go. I am grateful for His commitment to this, because on my own I see that I would never make it.

I see in myself that word so over-used it is difficult to feel its reality, the sin that misses the mark of all that could and should be. Like parasites that draw strength from my very own muscles, draining me of all I want to be, do, give, I see the shortcoming, the twisting and turning that draws out a boundary. I feel it deeply, my need that is great, my own inability to stand in the love that calls for integrity. There is nothing that I can do to truly make this right.

This Jesus on His horse, fighting so fiercely for a new day, a new way;
They say He has the Victory,
That one day every knee will bow and every tongue rejoice,
As we see Him coming, on the clouds.

In the meantime though,
He's doing it, you know?
He's making it Right.

(Listen to the whispers; Ask for eyes to see.)