shatter the glass
I have been standing in front of a picture window looking at the world beyond. My whole life I’ve seen the pain, the injustice, the heartache of God for his children behind the glass. I have been randomly window shopping all the world’s confusion and tragedy on my daily loop to no where and back with the help of world relief aid commercials designed to hook you. I see it there, yet as if it untouchable, I somehow feel completely disconnected, though the thickness of the glass would not withstand a child’s finger-pressure on the surface. The innocence of a child can shatter the glass with a simple desire and $5 of allowance money. Why I feel encased, tied down and helpless under this gorgeous blue sky is a thought beyond my unraveling. I am free to act, yet I don’t, and don’t know why. God routes me past that window of torment and hunger each day in my mind, hoping that my dense forehead will one day somehow be penetrated by the grisly images of hurt and depair so vividly displayed in the window and force me to move inward. Dante Alighieri said “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.” There is a point where more than just your feet need to be wet. Personally, I think I have crossed the line, emerged from the sidewalk and am now nose-to-the-glass in sober wide-eyed terror of the crazy days that will follow this.
Living in the light is like electricity. Once you turn on the connection to God, and you start to care, start to understand that the light just pours into you constantly, you realize that you were made to hold it, to live off it, but that you can’t keep it all inside you. You realize that you are in fact a conduit, a lifeline for someone else. You can’t hold in the light, or it will make you sick, and burn you up inside. You’ve got to get your feet out of the closet and burn sneaker marks in the pavement on your way to destiny.
Idly by the many die. As I sit in comfort, making money, in a place of relative peace, many in the world are pleading with me to come and save their life, to be given the gift I overlook as mundane and normal. The gift of life forever. The gift of eternal salvation, grace, and forgiveness. AIDS doesn’t have quite the same sting if you know your emminent death in the end will result in an audience with the one person that will never leave you alone. Death and pain and torment loose its power when you know the truth and accept it. Some don’t understand how holding the hand of a dying man can be “ministry” and what God asks of us. It is deceptively simple and yet so hard to cross the status quo, to change the game and shatter the glass.
That thin laminate poly-coated transparent menace that beckons and forbids. I am ingrained with the ethic to leave glass as it is. I am afraid I won’t understand the repercussions of the shards flying at me if I muster up the fight inside I need to decurse myself of this forboding nemesis.
To take a step back only worsens the depth of the fire in my soul. To look at what all this involves, to analyse the ripple effect of my actions, premeditated scare me even more, knowing that the glass can’t be unbroken once it is destroyed, yet the funny thing is once I break it, I won’t care that it can’t be put back. The high life, the elusive sublime utopia, and rose-colored glasses can be yours when you reach out and see the world through darkened eyes and empty hearts.
What are we all waiting for? Another disaster, another holocaust? Hasn’t there been enough victims, enough heartache, enough death, pain, and evil? Haven’t you had enough? What the world needs NOW, is love sweet love. It’s the only thing that’s there’s just too little of. Get on the bus, I dare you to move. It’s time to shatter the glass. You could be the end of poverty, hunger, AIDS, water-borne disease, hate, depression, suicide, cutting, hopelessness, and evil. I say enough. The time is now. The day is here. Shatter the glass.
