reduced to trust

I am slowly

day by day, night by night

being reduced to trust

 

I dream of peace, but there is no peace

Instead we live in the shadow of war

as across the sea, in a land where my ancestors

once raised wheat and baked bread

 

babies die

at the whim of a man who has been consumed by his humanity

and rejected his divinity

imago Deo lost

 

I dream of freedom

not a false and toxic freedom

that disregards the common good,

 

but that true freedom that comes

from hearts set free

that freedom that creates possibility,

that gives each person the opportunity to reach their full potential

as a child God

 

but we live in the shadow of authoritarianism

in land where an ideology and theology of dominance

is slowly eroding freedom

 

where a powerful minority

seeks to control everything and everyone

robbing some people of the right to vote

taking power away from women

marginalizing people who are LGBTQI+

 

slowly moving us toward a society of coercion and retribution

where might is the only right

where the values of Jesus are flaunted and ignored

 

I dream of equity

of a world where resources (the planet) are protected

and shared

where people work for the common good

 

but instead the rich get richer and the poor get poorer

and the earth is ravaged

and workers are exploited

 

and so I am reduced to trust

that whatever it is that is “beyond” logic

beyond my comprehension

 

that whatever it is,

whomever it is that I (for lack of a better term)

call God

 

is love

and is power

 

and, as power clothed with love

will somehow

redeem

restore

reconcile

re-create

 

and make all things new

 

I am reduced to trusting that

when God (Eternal Love) says

 

“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43)

 

God means it!