We are made to want to be greater than what we are. How, no, why must we stop searching and be satisfied by the man who can lift the car…no one underneath, yet leaves the child on the train tracks screaming. There is an infatuation with ugly yet we define it as “beauty”. Then the beautiful, those with golden hearts, tossed aside by those who believe their face to have been painted better.
We are not paintings. We are not far away works of art to admire and awe at. We are constructions constantly growing or crumbling, either shrinking under the ground or growing strong enough to rise above it. Rise above the evil and the fire and the hurt of underneath, because we all started in the same place. No matter what family cuts or homebound bruises, we all came from the same One. The same One who made us who we are. Who? I am.
Because it is not the boy who rejects the glass of poison ONCE who I applaud for. It is the boy who walks away from those who offered, and never ONCE comes back.
We seem to think that we are saved by simply BEING. Or by simply REACHING. Literally reaching with our arms into the air, shaking our heads, shouting AMEN! We seem to think that because ONCE when we were fifteen we knelt to the ground and read a four line prayer that we are saved, and the ten are not commandments but rather commands barked at us from someone up above. But then we think that He is a grandfather. An old man with a white beard, smiling and shrugging while we sin. At what sin does He shrug at? At what fault do we feel hurt at? At the boy who calls you fat or the girl who lies to your face or the mother who goes into another man’s arms when she already has arms wrapped around her and tiny ones at her legs…at which one does He shrug at? I know that the ten seem LOUD and bothersome and CROSS and HARSH. But tell me what is harsh when the family unit is attacked when mommy and daddy get a divorce ‘cuz mommy “had” to stab daddy in the back. Tell me what is harsh when the little girl in the white shoes is absent tomorrow at school because her mommy’s friend who is a boy “had” to hurt her the night before. Tell me what is harsh when the words “I’m sorry” and “Friend” bleed out of his ears as he tries to stop the pain of the bullet wound through his chest put their by a man who stole his cash and left. A sorry? An apology you think can be worth a lot, but really underneath the gauze and glittered effort it’s a thing that covers up the hollow remains of what you have broken. So, sorry. Some one once told me to be sorry before you do something and then you know, don’t do it.
I know these things are harsh yet I know they can be stopped if we take a second to remember all that we are taught. He hands these stones of light and love down to us from gates he lives at above. But really he lives, in every one of us alike. See, that’s the beauty that’s not painted, that’s the beauty that’s alive. ‘Cuz the ugly that’s perceived as a “beautiful thing” is the very ugly that causes all of this hurt and this sting. In fact, it’s worse than ugly, it’s worse than Gollum and than dirt. ‘Cuz some of us construct ourselves and some of us crumble into the earth. When we crumble, we have this tendency of not going back. We have this tendency to not listen to Him and laugh at those who try to speak of Him. Why should we listen to Him? What would be the point? He tossed me here alongside those who believe their faces to have been painted better and those who falsely anoint.
See but that’s the thing, that’s the big thing of why we’re here. Is it not easier to walk away? To crush ourselves down into little balled up things and throw ourselves away if it means staying the same. Rather than climbing towards the top, up to the steepest peak created, changing ourselves and following Him with only ourselves to blame for the sin. This is not the easy thing, and these two are not the same.
This thing of construction. This thing of growth, this thing where we dig ourselves out of all of this dysfunction and move towards Him is something spectacular, yet it must be played in the finest note. It must be grasped by all that we have and we must never let go.
Yes, I know it can hurt. I know of the lies that can be laced within a head so big that you think it’ll burst. But I know that this, that this construction that this light and love and unpainted beauty. Yes, I know that it is worth it. And if it is not…then let me be food for the worms when I am no more, when I never took his name in vein when I never really swore. If I never crumbled underground, but if that is where I would lay, then let me lie there peacefully and never see another day. But if it is the top that we must climb to, I would rather fall from the highest peak to the ground of reality, than have to pull out by bones and strain the muscles that I have to build a makeshift staircase to the top that only lets me walk up two or three feet because I was not prepared to stand. So let us be prepared, and please, let us please see. Because sorry will not cut it there, so be sorry before you don’t do the thing of wonder, and then simply do it. Because these people who are ugly, these people with paint, they are stained. They are stained until it rains and they dig themselves out, so let this be your prior sorry, and let you never again stay HARSH with doubt.