So Loved

This tends to be the time of year for a calendar replete with social events, and I have been honored to attend many these summer months.  But often, between gifts and hors d'oeuvres, there are glimpses of grief.  With each celebratory occasion, there seems to be someone joining in, despite their own heartache.  Babies are welcomed by the barren, couples are toasted by the lonely, and friends are congratulated for successes by those mired in failure.  Bravely, folks put their own sorrow aside to enter into the happiness of another.  Sometimes it brings a rest from the burden; sometimes the observance of joy blesses if it is at least in the life of someone near and dear.  From whatever motivation, showing up is often devotion of the most selfless sort. 

Recently, there was sadness in the eyes of a wedding guest who greeted and smiled and danced -- despair so deep that I couldn't help but wonder at the magnitude of pain contained in one so young.  And I admired the friendship she was living as she twirled on the outside.  Between toasts she entrusted me with a small portion of her story -- echoing with abandonment, isolation and the resultant deadness of heart.

On the way home from a together time that beautifully reflected the couple who stood before an altar reading vows of fidelity and faith, a song played. 
"Ocean" was vibrantly cascading through 12-string steel guitar sound, and the car and our heads were filled, filled, filled by the abundance of rhythm.  "That," I thought, "is the sound of life."
I wanted to give it to the girl who says she no longer believes in love, or happiness, or marriage, or religion.  I wanted it to beat and pulse and lift her -- all the way to feeling, all the way to being alive.  And I wondered that in a room replete with Christianity she could have felt so alone.  What do we who claim to know Love Incarnate -- what do we reflect?  Is it a willingness to go into the stormy, messy, dark places seeking after one small lost one, or a careful allotment of approval proportionate to behavior?  Do I live a gospel that is risky and exposing, or do I pare my world to prudence and safety?  Unfortunately for my comfort levels, "binding up the brokenhearted" will seldom be clinical and sanitary.  It is more likely to involve getting a close enough look at my own unworthiness, my glaring insufficiency that I am overwhelmed by the staggering magnitude of grace until I can't contain the rhythm.  Look up!  Listen!  There is belonging, healing, love -- for me.  For you. 

Sending a link to a tune will not convey this.  I know.  And I can't puzzle out how to reach her, anyway. 
So... I am praying. 
I'm praying for that girl, and for so many others in this world crammed to the gills with brokenness and pain.  That she would meet, face-to-face, the Lover of her soul.  And, please God, that she would be drawn inescapably through us who claim to have looked full in that wonderful face.

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.