And Now For Something Completely Different

When I was a kid, I spent a great deal of time by myself, alone with my thoughts, watching other people, asking myself questions about them that had no answers. They weren't questions about specifics, like who this person was or where that person was from, but just the same general questions over and over again.

Look at all those people.
Where did they all come from?
Look at all the lonely people.
Where do they all come from?

I grew up, I kept seeing these people. Blank looks on their faces, screaming at their kids, sitting by the side of the road, missing a hand, missing an eye, holding a half-dead baby, whatever. I'd walk past, maybe gave them some change to make myself feel better, said a prayer, but I walked past, and I'd wonder. What if I was that person? What if I gave up some of my time to actually help? What'd he do to deserve that life? Same questions, really, all of them, when I think about it.

What the fuck?

Let me elaborate. What the fuck? What the fuck was that? How the fuck is it I'm fed, clothed, and dreaming of being relevant while some other poor fuck two meters away from me is living that shithole existence? Who came up with this shit, and why are people wired to let shit happen? Why do I keep running into shit like this that makes me feel like a complete asshole? Who designed this fucking guilt-trip of a world, stuck me in like a poppyseed on a giant fucking lemon poppyseed cake, and proceeded to start taking bites of all the fucking nameless poppyseeds around me?

You hear all kinds of things people come up with to explain this shit. There's the spark of love in everyone. We learn compassion this way. No one is without hope. All we need is luuuv. Okay. Sure. I'll run with that. I had compassion for these people. Yeah, I did. And the fact that I had compassion made me feel better about doing nothing. Where's my cof-fay.

Then Christ found me, and after a long process of discovery, I learned the following things. We fucked it all up. We did. We're fucked up. Every one of us, fucked since birth. Here's the clincher, though: we don't have to be fucked up. There is hope for the fucked. All who come to Christ and believe in Him may be saved. All others... well they're still fucked.

Woah, my brain said. Wait a minute. We were fucked at the start? Dude in the Mercedes and the business suit, just as fucked as single starving mom and dying baby on the street? Ho-kay. Never would've guessed that on my own. Blue-collar schmoe here in front of me ordering a Big Fucking Happy Meal at McFuckingDees, completely fucked and doesn't even know it? Half-dying-soon-to-be-dead one-year-old with her fucking crackwhore mom, fucked here on earth and, probably, if no one else doesn't say to her the right words soon, fucked in the afterlife? Well, a part of me said, it's so fucking ridiculous you can at least be sure no human being made it up. Well, the rest of me said, it's fucking ridiculous, so fuck that.

Then God put a word in. That's how it is, He said. You don't see it all yet. You see only in part, as through a glass darkly. I am the God you met. I am the God who met you. I love you. Again, you do not see my love clearly.

You can deny that what I say is true.

You cannot deny that I AM the God you met.



Back when I first heard that, I pretty much said "Oh". This morning I woke up, and I was wondering what "Oh" meant, exactly.

Welcome to the blog of hope.