In the Land of Not Knowing...

In the land of not knowing
There’s a place with no name
The only way to get there
Is down the road of pain
The signposts to direct you
Are the ones you haven’t seen
Through the land of why and maybe
What if and what might have been

You didn’t choose to go there
You wished it hadn’t come
And torn all of your yesterdays
To leave the future feeling numb
A place of questions without answers
And endless guessing games
Filled by the impenetrable emptiness
That does not go away

Down the street called loneliness
The avenue of fears
There walks a Man in silence
He holds a bottle filled with tears
He waits among the shadows
Until you call His name
Then He comes and sits with you
And holds you in the pain

The road from that place is winding
The direction still unclear
But He promises to stay with you
He tells you not to fear
For He holds all your tomorrows
And He was in your yesterday
And silently He’s waiting here
In the uncertainty today

In the land of not knowing
There’s a place with no name
In that place you found Him there
And He held you in the pain
The questions are unanswered
The journey still remains
But somehow nothing matters now
Because you know His name

C.S.Burroughs
Written 13-04-2006

We Must Go

We must go. It doesn't really infer much of a choice does it? Must... it's a necessity. The question is, go where, do what, why? Voiced through a song I heard a while ago 'God of Justice', these questions began to challenge me. The chorus is as follows:

'we must go
live to feed the hungry
stand beside the broken
we must go
stepping forward
keep us from just singing
move us into action
we must go'

Tim Hughes

I think it's really easy to get caught up in talking about things, but without actually 'doing'. In realising this, I've seen the reality of it in my own life with greater clarity. It is a problem that affects the Christian more than others I think. I suppose that without God there is little need for questioning one's motives, or honesty or integrity... or any of these things, other than to make yourself feel good, or to commend yourself to others. Without God, these things can be a lot more trivial.

With God, well... we're still human, we still long for the approval and acceptance of others, we like to be thought of well, and we are afraid of honesty. Or, we are afraid of what will be thought of us if we are honest. So, we hide the uglier bits of our characters, we stifle the thoughts we have when nobody is looking, and worst of all, we convince ourselves that we are in fact better than we are. Even in things like trusting God. I can look back and see times where I was talking to people about trusting God with something, when I can see I clearly wasn't, because I hadn't given him the time to tell him. In so many areas of my life I do this, I am just so blind to my sin. Anyway, that wasn't what first struck me about this song, nor what I had originally felt I would write... but hey. It is about moving us into action, keeping us from just singing, from just talking about these things, and move. Do. Be. All part of the same thing I guess.

Back to the point... hehe. It's what we're called to... 'Live to feed the hungry, stand beside the broken, we must go'. Jesus' commands are imperative. We are called to more than just living, we have been given life to the full... so we must share that. We are Christ's ambassadors, his representatives, his hands, his feet. I know this truth needs to impact my life more than it does at the moment. That is where we are called to be, no matter how hard that is. I don't see many places in the gospels where Jesus stepped into a comfortable situation, or happy lives. Freely we have received, freely we must give. We must go, to where Jesus went. To where he is now, but where he is not known. Be that to the ends of the earth, or meeting a friend for coffee... the broken are all around us, among us. We must go. We must love.