Touch

Sometimes I sense the expectation of having to rise above the realities of life.  I am expected to ignore the realities, play the game, and go in for the win.  I, especially as I add more and more gray, refuse.  Life isn’t meant to be lived that way.  Life isn’t about playing a game.  Life is community and relationships!  When someone experiences pain, we should hurt.  When someone dies we should be able to cry.  When there is a tragedy and loss we can hold onto Hope!  This is real living, even if it isn’t the kind of life portrayed by the world in all its forms.
 
I find myself wanting to scream at all sides, yet the conversation always gets back to the same essence of the debate.  “Hold your tongue, you who live on the seacoast, merchants of Sidon.  Your people sailed the deep seas, buying and selling, making money on wheat from Shihor, grown along the Nile—multinational broker in grains!   Hang your head in shame, Sidon. 
 
The Sea speaks up, the powerhouse of the ocean says, ‘I've never had labor pains, never had a baby, never reared children to adulthood, never gave life, never worked with life.  It was all numbers, dead numbers, profit and loss.’”  (Isaiah 23.2-4) 
 
No it isn’t just numbers, profit, and loss.  They are, in the beginning, middle, and end, just dead figures.  They may represent something which can be real or a fa?ade, but they are not in themselves the heart of what it means to live; people are. 
 
Life is community.  It is the relationships which bind us together, give texture and meaning to our actions.  They provide the critical ingredients to our experiences.  Without either there is little point to our existence. 
 
I find myself being a student of Divinity.  When life reaches out and touches my heart – let the pain and joy, heartache and comfort, peace and turmoil – reach in deep.  Experience, understand, and learn.  Engage in the messy, real, and tangible.  Move into reality, beyond the virtual.  Above all, let God touch you.