There’s a lot that I wrote down and even more I want to say, but I feel that meaning can become muddled in an overabundance of words. This will have to suffice.

In the face of many problems, it’s easy to lose hope. In the mixed up, backwards, convoluted ways this world works, we’re likely to become confused, lack direction and feel as if our reasons have been misplaced and our purpose compromised. Trying to wade through such disconsolate craziness, senselessness, and wickedness can be overwhelming, especially when we find those things bubbling up within ourselves. Truth be told, we’re sick, really sick. We want so much just to fix ourselves, but we cannot. Attempts at self-diagnosis and self-remedy can leave us in a worse condition than before. Without the necessary help, our minds become divided and we live out half lives with double (or even triple) standards. We yearn for companionship but we won’t stop building the walls that keep us secluded. We say we want the truth, but we’ll only take the kind that has been watered down, diluted to the point that it has lost the power of its purity and it is no longer dangerous to follow. We want to know how to love, but we’re terrified of the sacrifice that real love demands. When I say we, I also mean me, but not just me.

But amidst the bleakness there still stands a hope that can never be lost, a purpose that is abiding, a wholeness that cannot be torn asunder, a compassion that demolishes our walls, a truth that remains untainted, and a love that has counted the cost and payed the greatest price.

We need help from God. We need help from others. It will be difficult to accept, and yet how truly, how desperately, we need it.

From Orson Scott Card in his introduction to Speaker for the Dead:

“You see, the work of a storyteller doesn’t get any easier the more experience we get, because once we’ve learned how to do something, we can’t get excited about doing exactly the same thing again—or at least most of us can’t. We keep wanting to reach for the story that is too hard for us to tell—and then make ourselves learn how to tell it. If we succeed, then maybe we can write better and better books, or at least more challenging ones, or at the very least we won’t bore ourselves.

The danger that keeps me just a little frightened with every book I write, however, is that I’ll overreach myself once too often and try to write a story that I’m just plain not talented or skilled enough to write. That’s the dilemma every storyteller faces. It is painful to fail. But it is far sadder when a storyteller stops wanting to try.”

I’ve been thinking lately about God’s promise that one day all things will be made new. It’s not just better, nicer, fixed, or even complete, but brand-spanking-new (probably without so much spanking). And it isn’t some things, but all. I don’t think the implication is that all things will be obliterated and replaced by something different (similar to the flood). The things which exist now will still somehow exist, but they’ll be new, transformed into a completely different state, one of perfection (like that scene in The Great Divorce where the evil lizard is transformed into a great unicorn). It’s hard to imagine what that means exactly, or how it will look, like trying to think of a new color that’s unlike any other color we’ve ever seen. We’re so used to the way things are, it’s hard to imagine everything we’ve known suddenly changing.

I feel like the more I hear about world events the more I realize how desperate and dying this place is. While we can make an impact for the better, it’s going to take more than all the humanitarian effort in the world to make everything good and right again. I can’t believe the theory that we, as humans, move in a constant upward motion, drawing closer and closer to utopia, evolving ourselves into perfection. No, it is the opposite; we had it and now we’re falling farther and farther from it, at ever increasing speeds. Politicians promise change, but rarely do their promises hold weight. Advertisements promise fulfillment. I love how this is exemplified in Blue Sky’s film Robots with with slogan, “Why be you when you can be new?” And yet no matter how much stuff we buy, it only feeds the insatiable craving for more. Are these the things we should place our hope in? People and products will always let us down, but in the smoldering ruins of our misplaced hopes and feeble attempts to fix ourselves, there remains God’s promise of newness, immovable and brilliantly shining. Although its final completion is still far off, real and effectual change can start now. Newness is for today.

Isaiah 65:17-19

For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;
And the former shall not be remembered or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create;
For behold, I create Jerusalem as a rejoicing,
And her people a joy.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
And joy in My people;
The voice of weeping shall no longer be heard in her,
Nor the voice of crying.