The Numbing Effect

Today we are faced with death, violence, war, poverty, and tragedy on a daily basis. What popular video game these days doesn't involve death, war or violence?! How many times have you past a homeless person while you are driving somewhere? When is there ever a day when the news does not report a horrible tragedy. All these things are horrible, heart wrenching, life changing forever type of events. Yet we are faced with them everyday and have become numb to them.

Death doesn't seem like a big deal because last night you killed 20 people playing your video game.

Hearing about horrible violence on the news doesn't break your heart now that you have seen all those violent and horror movies.

You don't see poverty as a very serious problem. The fact that over 17% of children in Tarrant County live "in poverty" doesn't make your heart sink.

We are so numb to the serious chaos that we live in. We have poisoned, numbed our brains with all the junk we put into it that we so often overlook the real problems because we DONT EVEN NOTICE THEM! I just wonder...why doesn't our heart break when we see a report of a violent crime on the news? Why doesn't the mere statistics of poverty make us want to jump off our couches and help? It saddens me that these real, serious problems in our world rarely budge us, that we are so numb to these things because of all the junk we place in our heads.

One of my favorite lines in a song is "Break my heart [Lord] for what breaks yours" and that is my prayer for us all. That we stop being numb and simply overlooking the serious problems of our chaotic world and that God gives us the desire to do something about it.

New Life

"You are fearfully and wonderfully made"

In a certain faith tradition when a couple has a new baby the mother speaks a special prayer into the baby's ear the first moment it is born. This is done so that the prayer is the first thing the baby hears after he or she is born. I was so touched by this tradition that I decided to use it. I spent many nights praying and thinking about the perfect prayer to whisper in my son's ear when he was born. I wanted it to be specific to him and special to the both of us.

The prayer that God gave to me was perfect and it stemmed from a thought that I had throughout my entire pregnancy. How can anyone who has had a child deny the existence of God. It seemed like in every step of my pregnancy I was in awe of God's wonder and majesty and power because of this little miracle growing inside of me.
I can tell you one thing...I grew more in my faith and grew closer to God in those nine months before Ian was born (and the three months since) than I have in the past five years. It was like God was letting me take part in a tiny part of his creation. And that tiny role that I had was so huge...it changed my life forever.

If this tiny part of creation that I was able to be a part of radically changed my life so much, can you imagine how HUGE the power of God is? I can't! I can barely fathom the creation and birth of my son...an entire universe is too crazy big to image! How amazing is that?!

So I pray that you get to touch and understand a tiny piece of God's creation. I also pray you understand how tiny that piece is and as a result gain understanding about how GREAT the power of God really is. How AMAZING!