The Weight of the World
I carried tension with me everywhere I went yesterday. I didn't know I was doing it, but I found myself over-stimulated, extra sensitive, and compelled to check in on friends I haven't heard from much since lockdown started.
The Ladd family has found a good rhythm during his 3rd wave of Covid. Chris is working as usual. The boys and I have adjusted expectations, developed a schedule, and set some goals. Lifa plays with Benjamin at 7:30am on the days it's not raining so I can go outside to our rented weight rack for a quick weightlifting session.
Yesterday's workout took several attempts. It was so, so, so cold that I lingered indoors longer, hoping the sun's debut would cut the chill. When I was finally ready to reach for the cold barbell, it started raining. Three times. The boys were watching through the sliding glass door. Lifa would throw his head back, laughing at the irony. Benjamin assumed his brother's joy was because of him and danced with delight. While I tried to re-rally myself, Lifa popped his head out of the door and shouted, "RAINBOW!" He is, hands-down, the best rainbow hunter in the house. I snapped a pic of that rainbow and got to work. I nailed that workout under a beautiful arch of colors.
The tension I carried yesterday was that my biggest problem of the day was the rain showers, while, just a few hours away, the nation was being destroyed violently in civil unrest. We are safe where we live. You can play in muddy puddles and drink hot cups of coffee, yet the nation is being ravaged. Friends and family of friends are spending sleepless nights listening to gun shots for the sixth day in a row. People are dying in stampedes of looters, vandalizing malls and then burning them to the ground. Food and fuel are running low in these ransacked areas, and there's no way to get more in. Armed forces are being deployed. The nation was already struggling, and now an estimated $1 billion USD in damage has been done in six days. Lives, livelihoods, dignity, hope and homes are going up in flames alongside the shopping malls, factories and businesses.
I'm trying to figure out how to keep my boys busy. Do we go to the beach or take a drive to a farm? My Help Club moms in Durban are trying to protect their children from chemical fumes and gunshots, while desperately seeking diapers, formula and food.
While Benjamin glides on his balance bike and Lifa runs after a rugby ball, the nation shakes. Buildings burn. While rainbows light up our grey days, violence fills the skies nearby.
The tension is almost unbearable, yet I think it is sacred. It's the tension Jesus bore as he walked through the brokenness of this world as God's fulfillment of hope and everlasting life. He was the rainbow in the flesh. The earth shook and the sky went dark when brokenness crucified Him. But He came back.
Everything passes away, but Hope didn't die.
We're not sure what South Africa is going to look like next week. We're not sure how the economy will be impacted, how many lives will have been lost or changed forever. We are already working on ways to support as soon as we are able. Until then, when the weight of the tension becomes too much, I lift my eyes up and turn my broken heart to the One who hung a rainbow of promise across the sky.
"Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” -Genesis 9:16
He sees. He remembers. He lived and died for such a time as this.
The promises from God are not that He will make our bad days better. He never wanted us to hate, kill, steal or destroy in the first place. Our God is bigger than crisis management.
The promises from God are that, while the world is hating, killing, stealing and destroying... while the earth shakes and futures blaze... He is.
He is. That's the promise.
When life falls apart... when the tensions rise up... when trauma is closing in on you... He Is.
Even if the world burns to the ground, HE IS the true, eternal consuming fire.
"Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.” Hebrews 12:28-29 NIV