| Most times, Haywood Street is a place where I feel inspired, hopeful…exposed to the best of humanity and served a distillation of God’s love that needs no chaser.
There are times though too, when it just feels hard to be there. For me, these times are when drug and alcohol use are inordinately high, when our friends’ housing placements keep falling through, when prayer-time is filled with so much disease, dysfunction and destruction that my shaker ends up feeling like a bottle of bricks.
A couple weeks ago, I was attending a support group where the topic of the evening was the “gift of desperation”. The first person to speak, pointed out that the acronym for Gift Of Desperation is GOD. The second, third, twenty-fifth and thirty-second person shared incredible stories about their moments of desperation. These folks owed their lives to various shapes of dark holes, to sick and tired of being sick and tired times. What had appeared to be the end to those on the outside, was really a knock ’em down, drag ’em out, spiritual bar fight to a new beginning.
This conversation has carried me for weeks now — reminding me God’s work is happening, that her timing is impeccable, that when we witness desperation, we may just be witnessing the pull of string, the picking at tape, the holy mess of a gift being opened. |
