It smells like a carnival outside. The wind is blowing just right to bring a little bit of someone's fun to my senses while I sit in one of my quiet places.
I love carnivals. I think they're beautiful, but only at night when the lights are on. At a carnival, you can sit in that seat, buckle up and spin round and round, letting the wind push back your hair from your brow. You laugh as hard as you can as tears drip down your cheeks. They help you forget for a couple hours about the things of life that have left you barren.
But it doesn't matter how much fun you are having, at some time, they are gonna turn off the lights and you have to leave. Back to life. Back to reality.
Some people have been given different gifts and circumstances. Some people are that smile that lights up a person's entire face. Others are stones on a weathered shore. When the lights are turned out, some go home and sleep peacefully through the night and wear their joy all over themselves. Others go home and pray for peace as we sleep, dreading what their dreams might bring them, and wake up fighting to see the sun, so we can rise out of that bed.
Whether you are one or the other, God loves you and has blessed you all the same, even if it looks different. I think this is where many Christians have it wrong. There is a different, less offensive and trickier version of the prosperity gospel. This one doesn't promise riches, but does promise that life will come to you. It tells us that Jesus doesn't allow misery for His children. It promises us that everything that happens to you has happened to better your life and overall happiness. This can be true, but it isn't always true. Sometimes I think we go through horrible things not to make us happier, but to Glorify God in the way we keep standing. Some people suffer things that don't heal. People lose loved ones and we may not see them in Heaven. Thank God I haven't lost anyone yet that I didn't expect to see there, but others have. Some things break and aren't ever fixed. For every bleeding woman that touches the hem of Christ's robe and are healed, there are millions that still bleed despite their cries for mercy. It doesn't mean God doesn't care or that He doesn't have eternal paradise with that person in His foresight to make Him smile while His heart breaks watching us cry. It simply has to be this way for whatever reason He has for it. Read Job if you think God doesn't allow misery in His children. Read Job if you don't believe that another God fearing friend would blame the afflicted for his sores.
Christ is about us being a light to those that are broken. He proved that He often chooses the broken to go and follow Him. Even if it costs them everything.
Sing.
Migrate.
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