sometimes you gotta dance...

I love this picture because of what it represents of my friendship with my college roommate. To this day, there is hardly anyone who can make me laugh as hard as she can. And we have also been through some hard, difficult experiences. We have had serious discussions about why the world is as it is and how we can try to make a difference in the wrongs we see.

This inevitably drives us to our knees in prayer to the Living God. As much as we grieve the world's wrongs, He grieves even more so. As much as we wrestle with how to approach these, He--the all-powerful and all-loving One--must do so even more. How to right wrongs that are often due to our collective stupidity as a human race? Where we snub those different from us, alienate the ones we should seek reconciliation with, and even close our eyes to the tragedies that cross our TV screens (and cubicles) daily. I find hope in talking to the One who can see it all at once--and who grieves it infinitely deeper than I do.

His grief is both productive and costly. Productive because it takes the power out from underneath all of these grievous wrongs we observe in society. [our personal and collective stupidity, aka sin] Costly because the price was the one he loved above all others: his son's life. But in that blood, there is a mysterious redemption. Understood best by those who believe it. Whose lives have been changed by it.

Who turns grief into joy...mourning into dancing. So that even amidst the pain and turmoil of the world--felt personally and as we open our eyes to the people around us--we can dance! It feels like a miracle.

I think it is.