Whispers in the Dark

They come out of nowhere. The voices. They climb inside you and tear at everything they can find. They speak every moment that they get. Nocturnal voices that remind you of everything that hurts you--the names, the places, the faces. Whispering some truth, mostly lies, and a mixture of both.

We--I--am haunted these whispers in the dark.

Skillet captured everything I could ever hope to say on this topic, with their song "Whispers in the Dark." I'll quote a bit for you, and basically shoot straight with some thoughts on these voices. The voices and whispers in the dark.

"Despite the lies that you're making/Your love is mine for the taking."

  The darkness is full of lies. It seems that there hasn't been a night since I got on campus that I haven't had the voices start coming to me at night and telling me lies. Telling me that I'm not good enough. Telling me that I can't deal with the stress of the semester. Telling me things that continue to eat away at everything I do.

But God cares, and that's the truth. The lies are the making of those voices, but the truth is always going to prevail in the end. The truth of the lie is that we aren't good enough, but the voices never seem to remember that we don't have to be. We'll sin all our lives, but all we need is One Person that has never and will never sin. We do have self-worth because of Him, and we can be confident in ourselves (through Him) and not worry when we aren't good enough for other people.

"I will be the one that you run to/My love is a burning, consuming fire"

The voices would love for us to run to something. In fact, every time the voices start whispering, we will run to something. The difference lies in what that something is going to be. Too often I fall back on hard hitting music that merely entertains me while I pace around the cage of my depression. Things would look a lot different if I fell back on something that could open the cage instead.

The love of God never fails. The love of people might, but (as Matt Redmond sings) "The heavens ring/The saints all sing/Great is your faithfulness." The fact that God's love is a burning and consuming fire (see the book of James) is both scary and awesome. Sometimes even scary awesome and awesomely scary.  He is so jealous for his people Israel (check out the minor prophets), but that can mean that He fiercely chastises them. Yet thankfully, that also means that He fiercely protects them. That flame of God's love will never burn out, no matter what enters our mind in the dark of night. And I do mean that literally.

"You'll never be alone. When darkness comes, I'll light the night with stars. Hear my whispers in the dark."

I find that night is the time when we (again, I) tend to feel the most alone. All it takes is for me to walk across campus at night, or sit in my room at night, or lie in bed at night, and the voices decide to make their rounds and remind me of how sucky life can be.

But here's the most crucial thing: God is whispering in the dark as well. Every time the demonic voices start to creep out of hiding, God's voice is there too. Sometimes it's hard to pick out the promises God is whispering to us when the voices from the dark are closing in. But as artist Todd Agnew said, "You speak with thunder and lightning. Your voice shakes the mountains, the foundations of the earth." It is so much more powerful than anything that can be whispered to us. It can feel so overwhelming until we remember the truth.

God whispers in the dark too.

"Seek the Prosperity of the City"--My Wealth and Urban Poverty

It turned my shopping trip into a guilt trip.

I was just trying to do some back-to-college shopping at the local Walmart. Pens, pencils, binders, notebooks, Cheetos...you know, the basics. A couple pairs of jeans, laundry detergent, and a shirt reading "You bored me to death" with a flatline EKG were also added to my cart. Top it off with some new headphones and a bottle of mouthrinse, and I was ready to check out.

But I couldn't shake the feeling.

I was doing some reading in my room this weekend. Reading and blogging, actually. There was (and still is--sorry, Mom) crap lying all over my room. Work clothes that I have to wash for Monday morning. CD cases with mismatched CDs sitting in them and on them. Three or four Bibles, some Jones soda bottles, and "Batman Begins"  round out the mess on the carpet. Normally, that all wouldn't bother me.

But I couldn't shake the feeling.

I just got home from church a few hours ago. We meet in a small building that could use some work. I read from the Bible and put down a few lines of notes on some paper. Then we gathered downstairs for a potluck meal of American and Thai food (I've learned not to ask what's in the Thai food, but to just eat it. What you don't know can't hurt you, they say). Just a normal Sunday in the Midwest.

But I can't shake the feeling.

Alright, now enough with the dramatic writing style, meant to leave you guessing at the feeling I'm talking about. I'll go ahead and share the feeling with you. Maybe it'll ruin your life like it has mine.

It's guilt.

Ever since I finished Dr. Platt's book "Radical", nothing has been seen in the same light. The thoughts of Christian brothers and sisters living on almost nothing is haunting. The knowledge of people living in urban areas like Detroit suburbs and project housing in Nashville just won't go away. This new perspective on poverty is blowing my mind--and I can't shake it. Thanks, Dr. Platt.

How can I just go to Walmart and start pulling stuff off the shelves when other people aren't going to eat today? I'm passing boxes of cookies and snacks, bread and water, shoving Oreos and Mountain Dew in my cart as kids in Uganda are dying because they haven't eaten in a week. I'm snatching two pairs of jeans from the clothing rack and shuffling through all the sizes to find just the right fit, when John Doe on the backside of Chicago hasn't had a change of clothes since he moved to the city in '98.

There's something wrong about that.

Or I can come back to my room and log online. I can find out about any country in the world or read any statistic about Africa or see pictures of any persecuted Christian in Sudan. Meanwhile, I'd rather be surfing Facebook instead of studying the Bible--one of the three in my room--when the guy across the road can't afford food for the week, and the guy across the world has never heard of the Bible. I've got clothes strewn across the carpeted floor, with a nice big bed to sleep on. The refugees in Laos or Thailand have half a set of clothes, while trying to sleep in the worm-infested dirt floor of the jungle.

There's something wrong about that.

Or I can be perfectly happy in my church. We can sit and argue about whether or not to use a guitar in the worship service, while the underground church is pleased to be able to whisper quiet songs without being discovered and martyred. We get so concerned over the particular clothes we wear to church--because we've either worn that shirt last week, or those jeans aren't church "appropriate," or the colors we finally decide on are clashing. But maybe we've forgotten that the Christians in the South American jungles of Columbia and Venezuela might be wearing shorts and an old shirt, because that's all they have. While I'm sifting through my closet trying to find "something to wear," they are sneaking past groups of child soldiers so that God can meet with the two or three gathered to worship Him. And we're concerned with what shoes to wear.

There's something wrong about that.

Disclaimer time. I'm not saying that our abundance is wrong, sinful, or even bad. It is just as ludicrous to suggest that wealth is bad, as it is to suggest that wealth is always a blessing. But I'm trying to do exactly what Dr. Platt has done in his book--make you think. To just suggest to you that maybe God isn't pleased to see us neglect our brothers and sisters across the world who could use our help. To merely bring to mind that maybe God isn't amused when we keep our wealth to ourselves, when there's a man in the urban setting that desperately needs a jacket and some bread. To simply propose that maybe God isn't laughing when we spend our paycheck on ourselves, when kids in the Congo are dying of preventable diseases.

Prayer? Absolutely critical. But action? Just as critical.

That's why I'm excited about Dr. Jeff Cook's class "Intro to Urban Ministry." I'm excited to see how God begins to develop an already passionate heart for the inner-city poverty that we often forget exists. Dr. Cook's "poverty weekend" experience is an out-of-class extension of learning that, I believe, will drive home everything I've said here, and everything we will learn in the classroom. All the lectures and all the blogging in the world cannot compare to a real-life experience of homelessness, suffering, and poverty. And I'm excited about it.

Maybe that makes me crazy. Maybe following Jesus is a little bit crazy. But in the end, that's what it is all about. It's about serving our Christian "family" around the world. Yet it's also about meeting the physical needs of those that know nothing of Jesus. In the meeting of those imminent needs, we then have the opportunity to introduce the urban community to their Savior.

Because we need to take Jesus to the inner-city and around the world.