March 29, 2010

  • Tainted

    It's almost midnight and I am completely sleepless. I don't know why. This is rare.

    Instead of fighting it, I'm just going to get some things done. Like writing an incoherent blog.

    I was thinking today about corruption. Not like the government kind, or the kind that happens to metal after a while. I'm talking about the general kind. The all-pervasive kind.

    I was drinking out of my mug today (just water) and before I took a sip I noticed some... chunks at the bottom of the cup. Gross. I had to rinse it out and ended up washing the cup as best I could. I didn't think much of this until later in the evening when it came to mind that just about everything was corrupt.

    Finding anything in pristine condition is rare, and it usually doesn't stay that way. Clothing gathers lint and warps with time. Pages crinkle and bend. Plastic loses its color and paint starts to chip. Everywhere, everything is in some progress towards dilapidation. We are one mess of a world.

    Our characters too, are often in shambles. Made new every morning, we crawl back to our beds broken. We must be a resilient folk. Not a soul walks around untainted. If our struggles showed like battle scars we would be a tremendous (or perhaps hideous would be a better word) sight.

    Does writing at midnight naturally bring about morose thoughts? I don't know. My feet are chilly.

    I'm tired of living in a falling-apart world. I want to live in a world where things are beautiful and they stay that way. I want to live in a world where I am beautiful, and when I am done with the day, I am not changed for the worse. I want to live in a world where people don't lie and cheat and say mean things. I want to live in a world where love, peace, and joy are what is natural and strife, resentment, and rudeness are not even an impulse.

    This is one of those "I am tired of fighting" days.

    And then I remember the high days, and they seem like an illusion. As though I am at the base of a mountain and the peaks are so high they disappear into the sky. But I know it's there. I know that even in the din of life, God is here.

    If He was born in a barn, in a manger which may have later held horse slobber, in a place where people's hearts were so cold they didn't even recognize the coming of the One who would save them, He can be anywhere. If dilapidation did not keep Him from saving His own, why is it keeping me from taking His word?

    Maybe I take perfection too far. Maybe my dreams of what ought to be isn't what ought to be. If Jesus died for us "while we were yet sinners" who am I to be discouraged at our state? Perfection isn't what God died for. It was the grunge. The rabble. The down-and-dirty. The fungus, the crust, the dirt under the fingernails. Yeah, it was for me and you.

    I believe.