Speechless

It has been over a week since my last post. I made a committment to myself to post at least twice a week, and here I am in the fourth week of this journal and I've already blown it! I guess I could chalk it up to Labor Day weekends and home painting projects (which explains the pink paint on my arms -- you can tell whose room we were painting!). Aaaaaaah, grace abounds.

But it has also been over a week since Katrina wiped out large portions of the gulf coast and left the city of New Orleans a cesspool. Every report I see, every CNN update I receive via email shows the "Big Easy" becoming more and more contaminated, with less and less hope remaining. Not a minute goes by that we are not forced to contemplate what will become of that whole region, how the poor and impoverished will survive, and what we will tell our children in the aftermath.

As I see these sights and think about these challenges our nation faces, it takes my breath away. Like the Psalmist writing from Babylon, "How can we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land?" (Psalm 137) The fact is the horror leaves us speechless as we don't know what to do with the images and realities we face.

And it makes me wonder to myself, maybe I haven't written in this journal because I don't know if I have the words to do justice to what these people must be experiencing. In fact, NOTHING can be said that adequately describes what is happening.

Last week, a friend asked me where in the Bible we might go to find comfort and wisdom in these days. I thought about it long and hard -- for her question was my question as well. But then it came to me -- the image of hope for us is found in the image and reality of the Cross. For on the cross, God took on human suffering that defies explanation and any words to do it justice. In the cross, we find hope for the dying and diseased, the sick and the sorrowful. In the cross, we see God loving us and identifying with us in the injustice of our existence. And in the cross God has connected himself to us in a Reality beyond time and space.

And in our suffering, we can experience a connection with him like (maybe) no other point in our lives.

So I am choosing to meditate on Christ's cross these next days and months in the aftermath of Katrina. I hope in so doing, I can find hope, intimacy with the Savior, and communion with those who are suffering.

What about you?