Dance in White Dresses...

I am reminded today of how the world hurts. How our generation hurts.

Our friends who laugh with us at lunch are crying to die at night. People we pass on the street with it all put together are falling apart as soon as they find isolation. Everywhere. Some of us live in too much of a protected shield, myself included, to realize how deep and widespread the pain is. Its time to open our eyes.

I did research today on the non-profit organization, To Write Love on Her Arms. The story that began this ministry is a powerful one. The video that explains it a little better can be found at the bottom of their website. (On the group's facebook page, you can see an interview of Renee two years after becoming sober.) But if you are only going to take one action after reading this, read the full story here.

Basic recap: Renee was hurting. She was suicidal, addicted to drugs, an alcoholic, and was cutting herself. She was denied entry into a rehab center because she was deemed "too great a risk."

Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her. She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds.

Sent back onto the streets, a group of Christians took her in, helped her get control for a few days, and then brought her back to rehab where she became clean.

As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: "The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope." I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."

Renee found hope. She found God's power of change. If there is one thing Im learning this summer, its of God's ultimate, all consuming power that brings life change. To prisoners, to the depressed, and to the hurting.

The best part of the story came at the end. He writes of the hope and grace Renee found in Jesus.

We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses.

Tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. Rarely have I heard a statement filled with such hope, such purpose. We all were made to dance in white dresses. To dance in joy before our King, for his pleasure and his glory. The broken, the confused, the hurting. The down trodden, the weak, the victims. But you know who else was made to dance in white dresses? The murderers, the victimizers, the pain inflicters. When they seek forgiveness, their garb changes from rags to robes. That is the power of Jesus.

I think the power of such a statement comes in revealing to a young girl who cant see living past today, who cant think past the hurt, who has been abused and taken advantage of, that she was made, made, to dance in white dresses...

But not only the hurting need to hear that. Those who are living "normal," "satisfied" lives need to hear it too. Because too often the complacency leads to sitting on the sidelines, refusing, by default, to dance before our King.

Another story that hit home the point was Josh Hamilton's testimony of how he left behind a life of drugs to become the MLB player he is today. Attributing it all to the power of the God of Change, he writes:

I prayed to be spared another day of guilt and depression and addiction. I couldn't continue living the life of a crack addict, and I couldn't stop, either. It was a horrible downward spiral that I had to pull out of, or die. I lay there -- in a hot and dirty trailer in the North Carolina countryside, in a stranger's house, in the cab of my pickup -- and prayed the Lord would take me away from the nightmare my life had become. How am I here? I can only shrug and say, "It's a God thing." It's the only possible explanation. I got better for one reason: I surrendered. Instead of asking to be bailed out, instead of making deals with God by saying, "If you get me out of this mess, I'll stop doing what I'm doing." I asked for help. I wouldn't do that before.

We know God is love. We know God is grace. We know God is powerful and mighty, patient and kind. But do we know God is change? Change for our broken lives, change for our complacency. Change for the ruts we thought wed never escape. Change for the cycles we thought would always go on.

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Lesson for Today: You know those embarassingly awkward situations that are minor and yet so horrible? Like someone catching you singing when you thought you were alone, or calling someone by another name only to realize it after the 15th time? Ya, leave those alone. Let it go, cut your losses. The attempt to fix them usually just results in further embarassment...