This is for you

For you who speaks with 30 years of experience, of smiles and strawberries, of bitterness, doubt. After thirty years of questions become encrusted with hopelessness? Conversing, of doing, of dreaming, of being, of sleeplessness. It was a standard response but if bad things happen to good people... The injustice in the world was referenced. In a single sentence revelation, transformation, creation were tossed aside as things that do not happen. But perhaps they were simply just not tried.

I believe. I believe in transformation. I believe it and I’ve seen the edges of it. I lived in the middle of it. I have been disappointed by the slowness of it. I have dreamed of it, I have thirsted for it, I have waited for it, I have worked for it. I am waiting for it, I am working, hoping, living for it. And I still believe. The storms, they will come to the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the plain, and the mediocre. How and why change from person to person, but whether or not the storms come is not optional. Such is life. Why, I don’t know but it is, okay. Storms come, boats sink and that is reality.

But God has arms and legs and breath and life. God has the arms that are not too short to pull the boat from the depths. The breath to calm the storm. The legs to run after and rescue or walk beside you while you window-shop. The life enough to live with all of us: The suffering woman in Burma whose been raped by her own government. The sales rep who talks fast and walks faster whose two kids have never wanted for anything. The homeless man on drugs sleeping in his urine. Angela Braly, Tom Hanks, Elian Gonzalez, Joey Fatone and the inventor of Top Ramen, and you and me and every one we have ever driven next to on the freeway and never seen.

I will choose to be hopeful, when all I see is grey and transformation seems as likely as the grass growing in the cracks of the sidewalk suddenly growing into a rainforest. I will choose believe that my sigh is a prayer that God hears, understands and responds to. I will read Psalm 16 and know that is true, that I have no good thing apart from God.

God is transformation and, you know, I like God. He has been good to me. I can't always see it and I don't always believe it. But I know it right now so I am writing it down to help me remember.

I respect you, friend, so we will just have to agree to disagree.