Enduring Lord

Enduring Lord, the journey is long, the pain is great. We look behind us and all we see are empty cities and fruit rotting on the tree. We see death where there should be life, oppression where there should be solidarity, bullets where there should be bread. Though you promise us it was there, we just cannot see a time when we were not in this storm. But you were there before us. You, our creator, have set your foot on the soil of pure creation and in love you shared it with us. You made such beauty and gave it to us. Forgive us for our blasphemy. Forgive us for taking your gift--so precious to you and offered with such joy--and breaking it on the ground in front of you. How that must have felt. Like a child forsaking the love of a parent. Like a lover scoffing at a kind word and returning it with degradation and scorn.

We look before us and we see no way out. We see only empty promises and plans deeply rooted in brokenness and depravity. We try so hard to believe what we know to be untrue just so that we can look to the future without pointlessness. There is no light at the end of this tunnel. We have no idea how you plan on getting us out of this. But you, Lord, are enduring. Yours, God, is a love that perseveres beyond our capacity to reject you. However long this journey may be, however rough the road may be, your love travels it far beyond the point where we can go no further. Your love is always longer. However destructive we are, however dark the world has become, you refuse to stop loving us and your love is light. Your love is a transforming love. Where we can only go toward death, you go beyond death and your love refuses but to take us with you.

Though the way of peace is hidden from us, may be look to you. For you are the way, the truth, and the life. We have no other hope.We have no means. So we trust in your means. We trust in the way of the cross. We look neither behind us nor before us for we can only look to you--the one who shares past, present, and future with us. May your future--the one we cannot reach, the enduring future marked by love--come crashing into our present so that we too can have a love that is longer than the journey. Amen.

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