When the Tears Come These Days.

I don't know if it is just because of my ripe age or because of living on this groaning planet through six sometimes anguished decades, but I have noticed tears welling up in my eyes more often over the last year. They want to spill when I see a movie, hear a story or have a conversation around the good guy actually winning, or a real hero laying it all down for a righteous cause, or an outrageous wrong actually being set to rights.

I know this kind of stuff makes most people cry every once in a while. But, I suspect it more true that as I move into the last third of my life, the longing for what God promises to do at the end of the world's turbulent exodus is settling into an insistent tugging from a very deep place in me:

• I want the forgotten voices of the countless silent ones who lived and died as if they were never here to be heard loud and clear.
• I want all the enslaved and dehumanized over the centuries to be freed and ennobled as if someone cared for their plight.
• I want the overlooked, abused and lonely to be given their place in the sun.
• I want all the tears of pain and suffering to be wiped away forever.
• I want those who never got a chance to sparkle, to shine like stars as they were meant.
• I want the sick, deformed and mangled to healed to run and leap for joy.
• I want the music that stayed silent, the art that never knew a brush and the poetry that failed to find form to take center stage for all to see and hear.
• I want cruelty to disappear and war to find no takers.
• I want those who gave their lives for peace and justice to have life beyond their wildest imaginings.
• I want justice, grace and peace to rule the day.
  
• I want the good and true to fill the universe.
• I want evil to disappear and life-freeing live to engulf creation like the sun fills a morning.

I want many other changes like the above. As I get old though, I find it harder to live in a broken world the longer I live here, especially bcause I know there is something better just beyond the veil waiting to be revealed. I get tired of the sad story of cosmic rebellion and long for the joy-story of a new earth conjoined to a new heaven forever.

In the meantime, my hope is that imagine/northampton will reflect a little of the joy-story by how it loves and serves people in this "paradise city." We will point to it in our helping and encouraging especially for those who have had no real reason to lift their heads for a long time.

At the very least, we are sure going to try over and over. And the tears will continue to well up in my eyes everytime I get a unexpected glimpse of what is to be someday.

MARANATHA!