Ministering Angels

After I wrote my last post, I continued to struggle with feelings of discouragement and isolation, despite the hope that God had already given me. I felt like I had already come face to face with so much heartbreak and desperation, and I was beginning to feel desperate myself. Every set of eyes with hopelessness in them and every person whose dignity had been taken away I took as a personal blow to my inner being; I took it to the core of who I am until I doubted even that. God has called me a mother to the motherless, and yet I felt helpless in this huge place, so full of people who need that kind of love. I want to save everyone, I want to fix everything, and when I can't, I get overwhelmed. I can still feel myself being pulled into a place where I am tempted to want so badly to help somehow that I lose hope and am not able to help a single soul, not even myself. My doubt in who I am as a lover makes me incapable of love.
But God is faithful, and the day after I posted my reflections on the "City of Angels," I opened up to read where I had left off in Walter Brueggemann's Prayers for a Privileged People, to a passage called "Sustained by Angels." Irony. This is what waited for me toward the end of the passage:

"So we pray in the Lenten season,

give us primitive freedom to

take full stock of Satan and the power of

evil still among us in our prosperity and

wealth and sophistication,

and give us primitive openness

to your ministering angels

who are present with care and gentleness."



I'm finding myself in a balancing act. Balancing reality with Truth, and trying not to let reality win out. My eyes were taking in the realities of the pain of individual people, the systemic injustices, the inequalities. But I had not yet practiced looking for the Truth, and my heart was totally unguarded. I realize now that along with my perceptiveness in seeing the wrong things-- the injustice, the pain-- there must also be an openness to God's ministering angels. I had to admit my weariness, already, and ask the Lord to minister to me by His angels.

I am starting now to find a balance. I'm searching for what it means to have the freedom to take full stock of Satan's work in this city. And it is evident, as on the metro the other day when a homeless man got on with a box in his hands and sat down on top of it. The train started moving, and the man looked around at the crowded train and asked "Where is this train going?" and not a single person in the crowd around him answered. "Where is this train going?" He looked like a puppy who had been beaten too many times, who had to muster all his confidence to say it loud enough, though no one would look him in the face. Finally a woman five rows back answered him, to my great relief. But the stunning silence as the man looked around at everyone around him shocked me and angered me.

I am also searching for what it means to have primitive openness to God's ministering angels, and God has given me plenty of opportunities to be open. There are glimpses of hope here that give me that balance between reality and Truth. The reality on Thurday night was that a friendly, talkative young man named Teddy spilled his guts to Kim and I on the metro, about his drug addiction and rehabilitation, his relationship with Jesus, and his recent breakup. The Truth is that what Teddy needed was a face full of compassion and someone to listen to him, and God thought we were special enough to fill that role. In reality, the homeless man we saw for the first time walking home the other day was an example of societal tragedy and injustice. But the Truth is, Kim had prayed earlier that day for God to send her someone hungry, because she couldn't finish her lunch that day. God did; his name is Raul and God put him there so he could have Kim's sandwich.

God has answered my prayers by giving me opportunities to look strangers full in the face and share in their humanity. These people minister to me by allowing me to love the way that God made me to love. I am still in a balancing act over here, and I've found it to be more of a battle with my emotions than I thought it would. I need prayer for focus, for my thought life, and for encouragement. But I'm finding the balance more every day, and it is beautiful.