Sometimes there are tons of thoughts swirling around in my head and they don't quite seem to connect with my fingers. People always talk about having a caffeine IV so they didn't have to drink coffee, sometimes I wish I had some sort of opposite IV that just extracted all my thoughts straight from my brain. Writer's block is a punk that I wish I could counsel into non-existence.
I'm American. Yes, I grew up all over the world, but even then I got to live in some of the most industrialized and well-off countries in the globe. I have never experienced real starvation. I have never slept in the cold without a roof or heat. I travel on airplanes and drive on highways in my 2012 Honda like it's no big deal. My life is so comfortable. And I don't even understand why.
It's currently 1 am in Germany, and I should be asleep, but insomnia plagues me so harshly here and sleep is never my friend. So in these late hours I watched a documentary, Virunga. [It's beautiful. If you have Netflix, give it a viewing because it's definitely worth your time]. It's a compelling and moving look at how "conservation is war," focused on the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
War is breaking out all around the park as they fight to keep the endangered gorillas and the park safe from rebel groups, and oil companies, and destruction. Obviously the point of the documentary is to move one into action to support the park and do whatever they can to help stop what's happening too it. Sure I felt that a little bit, but there was something bigger that I got hung up on.
I couldn't, and can't, wrap my mind around the fact that somehow I ended up comfortably splitting my time between the US and Germany. Sure, my country has been at war for as long as I can remember, but not within our borders, I am fleeing from nothing. And that these people in the DR Congo ended up in a place that has been at war for what seems like ever. Power is always shifting, everything is corrupt, and people are always running. The movie showed scenes of people literally running down the streets as a new rebel group moved in and took over the village. I don't run, not even for exercise. I don't run, and that is these people's whole lives. Running.
When I think about it I realize that I don't think about this much because it's hard. It makes it hard to see what's good in our world. It makes me doubt my God because on the large scale these world seems so overtaken by evil and darkness that I find it so hard to believe that he can even begin to penetrate the clouds that cover so much ground. I get mad about that fact that I've been whining all week about how much I want a fancy dSLR camera. As I type this I want to punch myself for being so utterly selfish and blind.
I'm American and I live in my own little world. My eyes are blind to the fact that there is real evil out there that tears apart families and physically hurts in a way that I will never know. My world is comfortable so I don't care. In my world my God is mine, all mine. I am so quick to forget that he is the God of the nations. That he is the God of these people in the DR Congo that are fighting to keep gorillas safe and bring peace to their country. He is the God of the Germans that live next door to me.
In church on Sunday there was an African family that lit the advent calendar. When they were done that father was saying a prayer. I don't know if he had planned out ahead of time what that prayer was going to be, or if he just let the Spirit speak through him in the moment, but he got to a point where he began to cry. He was saying something along the lines of, Father, let those we know who have not come to know you experience your love this Christmas season. You could sense that his tears were those of heartbreak, that he was thinking of a specific person whom he wanted nothing more for than for them to know Christ, but they were also tears of hope. That he knew the Lord was faithful. That he would make himself known when he deemed the right time. I've seen some Americans cry like this, but it's rare. I admired this man as he prayed, and wanted to have the same hope and conviction that he did. Why does this seem to be more common among people who don't hail from the great US of A?
God is my God, but he is not solely mine. He is the God of the nations. I am lucky, I am so lucky that I am too quick to forget how lucky I am. Somehow I get to live in a place where having a Macbook and an iPhone and a queen size bed are normal and expected. By some miracle chain of events I ended up in a place where industrialization happened and economies became robust, and owning cars that drove on thousands of miles of maintained highways became the norm. My brain wants to explode thinking about how if I was just born in a different geographical location my entire life would be 200% different.
I don't know what to do with this. I think this was more for me. To get all my thoughts out of my head and wrestle with them on a page rather than just all up in my synapses, but here ya go - chew on the implications of this with me.
