The sleeping lion

The lion is wrapped under a warm afghan. He sleeps in his den while the jungle around him is coming apart. The rest of the animals are fighting for scraps of food, his young, left to their devices, are stealing from their neighbors, behaving badly in a desperate effort to rouse daddy out of his peaceful slumber.

The elderly members are sick and destitute; their tears streaming in endless cascades down their weary faces.

The plam trees bend under the force of the wind. No one is able to contain it,  no one has even tried.

The jungle is in an uproar, and the King of the Jungle is in a deep sleep.

“Wake up!” His wife, children, and other members of the animal kingdom long to shout, but he ignores their cries and burrows deeper into the covers.

In many ways, the church in America is like the lion: sleeping under a warm cocoon while the world around her cries out to be saved with moans yanked from their very entrails

Yet we sleep. We sleep while hundreds of innocent, many of them infants, are being massacred in Syria. We read about the young and old’s fruitless struggle to make ends meet in Greece, the suicides in Italy over the lack of work and aggressive collection of back taxes, the Spanish people stealing fruit from farms to feed their families, the unlawful arrests of children in the Kingdom of Bahrain, yet what do we do, what have we done?

We shake our heads in sadness and return to our churches. We sing the songs, raise our arms to praise the Lord, while the hungry, the downtrodden, the overlooked are knocking on our lovely doors, their knuckles bloody from the incessant effort. We have paid them no mind.

We collect funds to build new churches, but do we need a new, sophisticated building when the Undergrund Church in the 10/40 window meets in the fiorests, in dens and basements? If the sun and the stars are good enough for them, why not for us? What makes us more worthy of comfort than the rest of the world?

Have we been shamelessly spoiled by an easy, comfortable life?

We have hardened our hearts to the sobs of the poor, the destitute, the homeless, the lost, who look at us out of dead eyes with one last spark flickering in their eyes.

Church in America,  WAKE UP!

Let us feed the poor, bandage the wounded, help our persecuted brethren in restricted nations, let us step out of our sanctuaries and look for the lost. How can we expect them to come to us when Jesus Hinself walked over all of Israel in seach of His wandering sheep?

Let us shake off the warm afghan of complacency and indifference.

Grab God’s hand, take a big breath, and jump into the swirling waters of the world. We are all in this together, we are a force to be reckoned with!

Let us leave the slumbering behind so we can embrace who we truly are: The roaring church of Jesus!

 

 

The invisible ones

Have you ever walked by a homeless person and quickly looked away for fear your eyes would meet?

What were you afraid of if you connected gazes? In my case, it was the fear of getting pulled into the depths of quiet desperation crashing like violent wages against my heart.

This person and I were not alike. This person without proper attire, with snarls in her hair and rotten teeth went without because she chose to be. Why didn’t she simply clean up her act, find herself a job, and work?

Is the plight of the homeless so simplistic, so easy to solve? Could it be no issue involving human lives is either black or white, but traced with chalks of grey?

Have we failed to realize a live, beating heart pulsates within the flesh wrapped around the skinny, hunched frame? 

Have we numbed our senses to the poor we conveniently throw a veil around them and fail to see them as we walk past their rough exterior?

Is it right to continue our lives while ignoring the people behind the veil?

How we criticize the treatment offered the “untouchables” in India, who are now getting more aid from their government to get the education they deserve.

What about our “untouchables”? Have they fared any better in the US?

What can we do to help the poor, the unlovely, the ones whose exterior is marred, but still are image-bearers of the most High God?

God, we ask your forgiveness for walking past people’s pain and not being the helping hand they sought. Father, we ask that you open our eyes and instead of blinking in disgust at the sight of a homeless person, our hearts may overturn and crack with love for them.

 

 

 

 

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