God of Love Walking Among Screwed-up Humanity

Michigan State University's Museum of Art

I am screwed up inside and need a great unscrewing. While I've experienced much inner healing that evidenced the fact outwardly, there's still more needed, within me. I am a screwed up person living in a land of screwed up people. Like the apostle Paul, I have not already attained pure Christlikeness, but I press on to make it my own.

Every week I see the neediness of humanity - 

• adulterous men and women living in the fantasy land that "the children will be OK"; 
• heroin addicts who think they can beat the beast with talons padlocked around their souls; 
• control freaks bearing the terrible burden of always having to have things go their own way; 
• hiding people doing deeds in the dark while self-righteously judging all who stumble in the light; 
• materialist stuff-saturated beings who fail to see how the marketers of planned obsolescence and fabricated need dangle them on their hooks; 
• war-starters who cannot exist without surrounding decadence and dystopia; 
• perpetual victims whose failed lives survive by blaming others and refusing responsibility; 
• all the bondaged, bandaged casualities among which I am and dwell.

Recognizing this Howard Thurman writes:

"I know that this world is messed up and confused. I know that much of society stretches out like a gaping sore that refuses to be healed. I know that life is often heartless, hard as pig iron. And yet, in the midst of all this I affirm my faith that God is love - whatever else He might be." (40 Day Journey With Howard Thurman, 40)

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

1 John 4:16

Pray for those whose lives lack the give and take of love, that somehow love would enter their lives. Pray for encounters with the Great God of Love who walks among us.

Pray for your own self.