Wrecked

One week in the Philippines has landed me in the prayer room about every two or three or four days.  Being the highest point on the grounds of the YunJin Lyso Ministry Center, its glass walls enable a bird’s eye view of everything around you:  the dilapidated village of tin-roofed shacks next door, the glistening structures of downtown Manila in the distance, the people milling around the pool or dining hall or lounge areas below.  You can see while staying removed.
 

 
In spite of all expectations, the Month 11 high that was supposed to carry me through these final days of the World Race never quite made an appearance.  Instead, it’s been a battle against heat, irritability, distractions, introversion, and burnout.  The guilt that comes when I compare my Fancy Land life to what I see when I walk outside this gate every morning.  The feeling that I’m never doing enough, even though I know that the doing is not what it’s about.

This month, our squad has been given the absolute privilege to reach out to nearly every kind of need in the surrounding community.  Through the seemingly countless ministries of YMC, we are able to feed people who have been displaced by typhoons, teach orphans and abandoned children, encourage girls who have been sexually abused, disciple expectant mothers, and share the love of Jesus with street kids…
 

 
The harvest is plentiful.  But feels entirely overwhelming.  There are so many people, so many needs, so many everything… and no way fix it all.  What do you say to the woman who was flooded out of her home and is now living under a tarp in a school gymnasium?  How do you even begin a conversation about healing with a girl whose story of hurt is more despicable than you can fathom?  How can you adequately explain a loving heavenly Father to the fatherless children huffing glue on the streets?
 
How do you be?
 

The beautiful conglomerate of factors that drives me to that sacred nook time and time again.
 
While I’m up there, I pray.  I play guitar.  I cry.  I don’t typically do all three in one sitting, but that was the case this time around.  I was sick of everything inside and around me…  And I had to go. 
 
Do you ever randomly open the Bible and ask God to give you the passage that will explain your whole life?  Isaiah 35 was the wish-for prophetic passage, so I read.  I got a couple of verses in and then felt like I should read it aloud.  I started over, using my inside voice this time.
 

 
Right now, I want to type out the entire thing for you.  But I won’t.  I want you to read it for yourself.
 
And while your eyes soak in the words, I want you to experience it.  I want you to allow images of yourself and those you love or like or have met only once – I want those images to flood your mind the way they did mine.
 
I want you to strengthen your weak hands and make firm your feeble knees.  I want you to tell everyone who has an anxious heart,  ‘Be strong; fear not!’
 
Why?
 
Behold, your God will come with vengeance,
With the recompense of God.
He will come and save you.”
 

 
Everyone who has ever been abused,
abandoned,
told they are worthless,
treated as though their bodies were simply objects for another’s pleasure,
forgotten;

everyone who has ever been plagued by fear,
felt like a failure,
forgotten that the same God who raised Christ from the dead lives in them:
 
Be strong. 
Fear not.
Your God will come and save you.
 
The woes of the world kept my heart reeling.  But I kept going.
 
As my lips gave voice to the future of the blind, the deaf, the lame, the mute, my mind was barraged with visions of people whom I have been blessed to encounter over the past eleven months.
 
A picture of We Tao, a precious two-year-old little boy from China, blind and deaf since birth… whose eyes will be opened and ears will be unstopped.
 

 
A picture of Old Man August, a kind old man from Mozambique, paralyzed by a stroke years before… who will one day leap like a deer.
 

 
A picture of my Josie’s Angels, beautiful and unbelievably joyful girls from the Philippines, rescued out of sexually abusive homes…  whose haunt of jackals will one day be driven away forever.
 

http://instagram.com/amybook

 
One day.
 
One day, there will be a place where they – where we – will be safe.
A place that will belong to us.
A place where we will belong.
A place where no lion, the Devil, will be allowed to walk, because only the redeemed will walk there.
A place where gladness and joy are the norm.
A place to sigh no more.   
 
I was broken for the brokenness; wrecked for the ordinary.  I wanted that day to come now.  I was tired of the world.  I am tired of the world.  Of it, for it, in it. 
 
But one day… one day Our God will come.  Our God will come and save us all.

That is the promise that will keep me going until the end.