Come, Lord Jesus

Some days at my job are really great.  Some days, we win.  We get to see people making choices that bring them and their families closer to abundant life in Christ, and we rejoice.  Other days are more like today.

Today didn't feel victorious at all.  Today, the world just felt so broken.  Every time I turned around, I kept imagining peoples' lives shattered like glass, shards slicing into anyone who dares to try picking up the pieces.

Last month, I took multiple calls from a man trying to locate the girlfriend he had tormented so badly, she fled to a neighbor's without a stitch of clothing on her body.  Last week, I heard the story of a 14 year old girl who has already had multiple sex partners and an abortion and seems to have no idea that life doesn't have to be that way.  This morning, I saw the bruises on a woman who was kicked repeatedly by the steel-toed boot of a man who said he loved her. This afternoon, I read the rap sheet of a con-artist who sweet-talked her way into my good graces and nearly got a hiring recommendation from my office.

I sat at my desk at the end of this day, and all I wanted to do was find a way to make people on the outside understand how badly I hurt on the inside.  I wanted to throw things.  I suddenly understood perfectly how violence begets violence because I felt violent toward those men.  I wanted to hold that little girl and cry for all the things she doesn't know she's lost.  I wanted to bandage those women, tilt their heads up, look them in the eye and tell them how precious they are.  I wanted to shake that very gifted felon and make her understand how badly her poor choices wound everyone around her.

I wanted to call every godly man I know and thank him for not beating the women in his life, thank him for treating women with kindness and respect and helping them develop a sense of value and worth.  I wanted to call up every woman I know and remind her how treasured she is in Jesus' name.  I wanted so badly to find a way to pick up the pieces and put the world back together.

I longed to cry out for justice, knowing that only mercy would ever truly do.  Today, I prayed like never before, "Come, Lord Jesus, come."