Do something with lasting importance. Not something that will blow like chaff in the wind. But something meaningful. And important.
Earlier today I visited my friend’s art exhibit. For the past three quarters, she and a few others have been writing letters to incarcerated people. They hear their stories. No, they let their stories be heard. Because after all these years of living on this place rock that holds our families, our friends, our dreams, our regrets, these incarcerated men haven’t had a voice until now.
Their lived ones stopped calling. Their family has moved one, or maybe worse, wiped them from their memory, perhaps ashamed, perhaps a heart too long ago broken and has long since scarred over. Like chaff in the wind.
Marginalized and alone, they sit in something akin to darkness-- but not quite so dark-- because they sit there with their minds. The letters they wrote to my friend teem with thoughts wiser than any professor I have ever heard, with a longing to be felt, to be heard--so raw and so palpable that it surrounds me—me, hundreds of miles away, in my ivory tower that is Stanford University.
Do something of lasting importance.
We forget them because we don’t hear them. We turn a blind eye because they’re just outside our periphery. It’s a desert all on its own. Their throats dry and their hearts pounding in their ears, they don’t thirst for something deeper. They just thirst. Their need raw and so, so plainly evident if we turn our head for just a little bit away from the promises of success and our safe little bubble.
Sometimes I think it’s easy for Christians to have the Savior mentality: bringers of salvation, as if we ourselves hold it and can freely give it. But in my head swirls this idea that God has made himself already known in these places that makes them not quite so dark.
God is already there, and he’s called us to come with him. To go out and taste and see the goodness that he has already laid out. He has a feast for us, and who else is there? The widows. The orphans. The lame. The crippled. The incarcerated. They have a need so amazingly deep that it’s so obvious that only Jesus can comfort them. They’ve removed the blinders that narrow our gaze on money and relationships and good things from the world that do not satisfy us.
They have encountered God in their own ways—in ways I can only dream of-- but how will they know if someone doesn’t go out and teach? My job isn’t just to “make Christians.” It’s to show people and let them savor the goodness and righteousness and purity and loveliness that comes from our father. God lets us partake in his kingdom, and there is nothing of more lasting importance.