I recently read this article about a white girl that has a black friend, and how she sat next to her on a bus and people made racist remarks toward her friend. Her mom asked her what she did, and she said, “What could I do? I just hurt with her.” That’s probably the deepest thing I’ve read in a long time.
I hurt with her.
I got to thinking about how much everything around me hurts. How there are outrageous things happening, and it keeps escalating. If you are not outraged, you’re not paying attention. If you’re not careful these things will make you very depressed. Which is almost always the case with me. When we hurt with others, we open ourselves up to take their burdens. I’ve been thinking about that too. If there are two people carrying one burden and neither one is handling it well, there are two people really struggling. Two people carrying mountains they were only supposed to climb. I don’t think we were ever supposed to carry mountains, those things are heavy. And more and more throughout all of this, I GET that when Jesus spoke about mountains, the mustard seeds, and faith, it was spiritual. I’ve stood in front of very physical mountains and commanded them into the sea, and nothing happened. So either my faith is smaller than a mustard seed, which is extremely plausible, or He never really talked about Table Mountain.
You don’t have to look far to find people carrying mountains, you can look in your own household. Heck, you can look at yourself. I’m sure some of us will find a mountain range, with majestic peaks. I think that’s enough talk about mountains. You don’t have to look far to find people that are hurting deeply. And not only are they carrying around their own stuff, but they’re taking on some of the world’s hurt too. Now, I know some of y’all have got this life thing sorted and the very standard, christianese response would be to, ‘just leave it at the feet of Jesus’ but for the ones that do not have it figured out, let’s chuck that unhelpful response. If you don’t have anything helpful to say, don’t say THAT. Mmmmkay?
In my very long life, I’ve been taught that you can live your life or you can be lived a life. The first one is the preferred option. Some of us didn’t make the choice though, the choice was made for us when we were little, and we only got to choose at a later stage. A stage where we’ve already been lived a bit. Those things influence our first option choice. But, remember, the blame game is like death. What we choose to do with our eventual choice of living our own lives, is quite important. In the midst of all these options, our choice is a powerful one. Am I going to live from the outside in, where I am focused on just me or am I going to live from the inside out where I can invest life into others? The latter is the obvious answer and if we have any sort of moral compass. BUT…most of us choose the first one without even realizing it. I became acutely aware of this one evening in the not too distant past when I was about to go out to visit a friend on the street and didn’t want to because it was cold. It doesn’t take much to make me aware of my own selfishness.
So, in this place of trying to live from the inside out, the original design, the big PURPOSE, we get to meet people and if we stick around long enough we get to hear how they lived or have been lived. And we get to sit with them like Jesus did with the woman at the well, and we get a glimpse of what it takes for them to live. If you don’t take anything else I say seriously, then just think about this, it takes a lot to NOT kill yourself when you’re at the end of your rope. It takes a lot to not let the consequences of others influence you to the point of death. I’ve come to realize that it’s not suicide that kills people. It’s sadness. When someone comes to the point of actually committing suicide, they’ve been dead on the inside for a very, very long time. This is why it’s important for us to live from the inside out, to go and hurt with them and invest in a little hope. And not necessarily saying anything. Just being there. Most of the time we have nothing to say that will make someone else feel better, and that’s fine. Some say that emotions don’t matter, I think that if God gave it to us, it kind of does. Why would Jesus have wept, if He didn’t feel anything? Just asking.
So, here’s the thing, I’m very very tired of judgment. Not that from others to me, don’t really care about that. But from me to others. I am not a good judge, there are too many things to take into consideration, too many contributing factors and quite frankly it’s damn exhausting. Maybe, just maybe, judging other people lives a life for them. The other day someone I love dearly said something about that golfer and how he is a ‘man whore’ and I was like, ‘you don’t even know this guy’ in that moment my heart broke and I asked God why I was so angry with this loved one for saying that, and He said, “It’s because I love Him.” Props to God for remembering that prayer I prayed that goes ‘break my heart for what breaks Yours’. It breaks His heart when we pass judgment like it’s our purpose to judge someone. As if we weren’t made to be loved and then love.
My prayer the past couple of days have been for us to come to Jesus and confess, repent and be set free from the consequences of our actions against others, the consequences of other’s actions against us, the consequences of our actions against us but most importantly our actions against God. More often than not the consequences of our choices are guilt and shame, and that makes us hide from God, and we begin to live a life that goes from the outside in.
Instead of judging;
To the golfer I don’t know: I’ll hurt with you.
To the one passing judgment upon me: I’ll hurt with you.
To the prostitute I meet on wanderings: I’ll hurt with you.
To the used and abused children: I’ll hurt with you.
To the girl who had an abortion: I’ll hurt with you.
To the LGBTQ+ person: I’ll hurt with you.
To the bullied: I’ll hurt with you.
To the bully: I’ll hurt with you.
To the person of the same or different race: I’ll hurt with you.
To the addict: I’ll hurt with you.
To the person longing for unconditional love that just so desperately wants to be liked: I’ll hurt with you.
To the people whom God so loved that He gave His only Son to die for on that cross (us). To the people that God so desperately want to be with Him: I’ll hurt with you.
There they are. There we are – the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and sometimes trails got the best of us, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to faith. – Brennan Manning
Cling to Jesus.