During School of Dance's Wednesday morning worship and intercession, I was sitting there frustrated with my seeming inability "to do" a great many things and my inability to do them right. And I had been reflecting on Ecclesiastes recently. I know that all my efforts to do a lot of things, to do things well, and to help a lot of people, these really don't add up to anything... "Doing things" doesn't make me a better person--in my heart--or closer to or more like Jesus. My efforts won't make others "know" Jesus. All my achieving will not "achieve" success. Does that make any sense? I eventually make mistakes and let others and even myself down. So as I realize more and more my inability, what am I left with? I am left with nothing of myself, but to lean on--NO, to even collapse onto the Father! I'm broken. I cannot hold myself up, but God can, and He so desires to! In His arms, my heart melts--is transformed--from the selfish shell it once was... My heart is refined into His heart, into His desires. And so as my heart is no longer mine--but His--it overflows with His character, the depth of His love and grace, His peace, hope, and faith. What overflows is blessings that are steady and constant. Blessings are to bless with; they are to bless others. So I do not "do" out of having "to do." But God overflows what He does to my heart, and how can I not reciprocate His heart? How can I not share His heart to those around me?! And that is why I "Go," why I even desire to go beyond my comfort zone, an easy life, a life of relying on my own efforts to provide for my sustenance and my protection, a life of relying on my own control. My breath doesn't just sigh but heaves and my heart tugs as I write this, out of deep desire I have. This is not easy for the shy, little girl from Northwestern Montana - it's a hard road, and maybe the hardest in my head. All the world's reason and responsibility stands against me. But still, I step forward. I follow my heart, for it's swept away by the One I love.
“I will not toil in the flesh
Or for vain things,
For this is futile, ‘a chasing after the wind.’”
~ Reflections on Ecclesiastes.
The Waiting Cry
By Shannon Mintz
June 16, 2010
Where’s the joy and what to do if I cannot strive?
Where do my efforts go…if anywhere—
Because all fades away?
See the homeless man,
The widow with no income,
The orphaned child who has no mother nor father?
A noiseless cry escapes from their lips—without words,
Because they do not know the words to use—
Nor what they are searching for.
But, this is still a cry for help;
This is a cry for hope—
For their affliction to be seen
And met.
And God cries with them, calling out for His children to answer,
“Will you go?
What will you do?
How will you live?
Will you work and give of what I have given you—
Of yourself and of your resources to reflect My glory?
So that even ‘the least of these’ may ‘hunger and thirst’ no longer?”
But the homeless man,
and widow,
and orphan waited and waited,
And others died, and more waited,
For their cries to be heard, for their cries to be met—
And they continue to wait…
Today—they wait…
