Sight Beyond the Surface

8.17.23-8.23.23

Dear Reader,

Do you see them… they are all around us. 

So common has their condition become,

thus, the fright of it fades into the backdrop of our societal canvas. 

Those undeniably afflicted souls, whose marred countenance testifies– of addiction: 

the artillery deliberately composed for unleashing such self-destruction.

The Dark one hates God; moreover, the people created as a reflection of His image. 

The plague he promotes rushes through the bodies of his victims,

expeditiously depleting the essence of individuality within.

The afflicted swiftly obtain likeness in appearance,

each deprived of the persona formerly being developed,

in what was once youthful human craftsmanship… 

The repetitive result:

Recessed faces swallowed up by sunken eye sockets. 

Hollow voices projected through mouths twisted by the hypertension of incessant want.

Chests caved in, backs in a suppressive hunch.

Skin a shade of stone gray beneath the dense layers of sediment and dust…

See them, overtly positioned before you.

Wavering on street corners, clinging to deceitful signs,

in desperate expectation of you finalizing the means of their next “fix”.

You pass them at bus stops.

Their fists are clenching black foil and a plastic straw

pending from their parched poison portals,

strangely surrounded by debris and filth trailing their whereabouts without fail.

Ps 31:9-12

Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble;
My eye wastes away with grief,
Yes, my soul and my body!
¹⁰ For my life is spent with grief,
And my years with sighing;
My strength fails because of my iniquity,
And my bones waste away.
¹¹ I am a reproach among all my enemies,
But especially among my neighbors,
And am repulsive to my acquaintances;
Those who see me outside flee from me.
¹² I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind;
I am like a broken vessel.

Our city is wrecked by the assault of “fentanyl phenomena”.

This is the effectual stratagem of mankind’s Enemy,

exhibiting the following declaration of war in the face of God: 

“My mark has been made, my teeth in Your Heart.

I will take them under with me.  You will suffer sorrow yet. 

They are nothing.  They regard You as nothing. 

I own them and they will know my eternal rage.”

Dear Reader,

Did you once know one? 

A shadow box of who your son or daughter,

mother/father, sister/brother used to be?

Did you have a friend or lover, with whom you laughed and trusted,

now warped with grim obscurity?

Have you turned them off and shut them out from the channels in your head, 

so, they may be forgotten, and left behind for dead?

Hopeless, blind, forsaken – you’ve determined their estate.

The dusk encroaching fearfully, as Satan seals their fate.

The evidence is wicked. The sight is sickening. 

A vile violation of conscious withering.

The Enemy prevails.  He’s taking people out.

Dragging them through a blackened land, a zone of lifeless drought.

…

But God.

Gen 3:9 Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”

I know a God who is unlike any other. 

He sees all things and holds all things together.

He knows the ways of all that live and warrants the beating of every human heart.

A God who turns not His back on brokenness, but draws the damaged unto Himself,

Ever present in the central place of a person’s pain.

John 1:4-5 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵ And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

He is altogether righteous and perfect in all His ways.

In His flawlessness, He demonstrates a measureless mercy,

by which all of creation is permitted to exist… for a time.

The days grow dark.

The Holy One calls.  “Come to Me.”

Is 55:1, 6-9

“Come, everyone who thirsts,
    come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without price…

“Seek the Lord while he may be found;
    call upon him while he is near;
⁷ let the wicked forsake his way,
    and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,
    and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
⁸ For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
⁹ For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

John 6:35 …“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

He knew.  He had known from the beginning we would fail Him. 

Our betrayal was foreseen before the beginning and yet, He gave us—everything.

John 3:16-17 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

He reaches for us.  All of us.

Bus stops and mountain tops.

His Holy Spirit searches the fissures in which souls have fallen,

And magnetizes a multitude with His mercy.

John 12:46 I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness.

Holy Father,

Gracious God who is filled with indescribable mercy…

Oh LORD!  The purity of Your essence leaves us speechless as we seek your Face and favor.

Come LORD. 

Encompass those in the pit of despair with undeniable encounters.

Draw the lost unto Yourself and inundate them with Your unfailing love.

Oh God, Breath of Life,

exhale Your power onto the dead that they may live.

Revive a spark of hope to each one,

whose life You know from beginning until the closure of 1^st death.

Restore them to the people You’ve designed them to be…

for Your glory, that evidence of who You are would be indisputable through redemption.

May revival of testification of the LORD Jesus Christ,

who was and is and is to come break forth and shatter the darkness over our city.

May You rush through this community with everlasting intensions,

and cause the Gospel of Christ to evade like unquenchable fire within the center of our society.

Thy will be done.

Thy Kingdom prevail.

Forever be praised.

In Yeshua we pray.

Amen.

John 5:25 Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live.