Wrestlessness

I feel like running away.

Every time I start to get comfortable, a small but strong sense of strange restlessness begins.

What if I just drive up to Washington?  Straight into the beautiful wilderness and exquisite cities there.  Leave everything here behind and start something new?  Something great.  Something big.  Something freeing.

That whole thought flashes through my mind as a feeling in less than a second, and as quickly as it came, my sanity turns it back around.  Of course I can't leave.  Of course I don't even want to leave.  The friends, the familiarity, the skills I'm all building - I love all that.

Right?

Maybe it's a part of who I am, because this is all very familiar.  Every time anything settles at all, I feel this.  Exactly this.  Like something deep down isn't okay with normalcy, like the rest of me is.  Like something in me needs to stretch it's cramped legs and take a run through the great unknown to be satisfied.  Like something just can't quite handle sitting still or focusing or breathing for an extended period of time.

And like usual, this strange feeling will pass in a week or so and I'll move on.  

Because afterall, I don't even know what I'd be running from.  

A Restorer of Streets with Dwellings, A Repairer of Broken Walls

(Isaiah 58:12)

Isaiah is by far my favorite book.  Not just of the Bible, but of everything.

Full of toil, full of truth, of power, of hope.  Of promises - promises that have come to pass, and promises that will come to pass.  Of justice for the poor, justice for the broken.  Of the most beautiful, profound, magnificent savior.  Of rebuking and of encouragement, just about hand in hand.

I wish I didn't get so angry.  Injustice makes me very angry.  Corruption makes me so very, devastatingly angry.

I don't know what happened, but since I got back from Peru I just can't stop being angry when I see the oppressed, when I see needless death and sickness and neglect, senseless poverty and hunger, unjust homelessness.  When I see businesses purchasing unjust laws with millions of dollars.  In fact, just thinking about it makes me want to scream, to throw something.  It makes me restless.

It makes me useless, as I sit and writhe in anger and frustration and am, in the end, paralyzed in my passion.

Really, what I want to be is a restorer and a repairer.  I want to use my passion in constructive ways.

What a challenging encouragement: "do away with the yoke of oppression, [do away] with the pointing finger and malicious talk... spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed." (Isaiah 58, obviously with emphasis added)

And for me that says: "Shut up, stop complaining, stop judging, stop blaming - just stop.  And just do what you know is right.  Toil for what you know is right.  Toil in the way you wish everyone else toiled for what is right."


I know God will restore, God is the only one who does true transformation in anyone/anything, and God's the only one with the proven power to truly turn things around. And he is doing all those things.  He has, and he will continue to do those things.  And honestly, that's the only hope I have.

But he asks us to join in.  He asks me to join in.  And stop boiling in the corner.  I need to stop just being angry.

I just love Isaiah.