O Come, Come.

Today's prayer meeting really... well, it was good. As I was praying, I... well...

I'm stuck.

I realized that again today. It's been a while since I've come to see that again. Stuck. Between what I want to do and what I also want to do. Those two parts of me raging battle in my chest, exchanging blows in my head, and struggling for dominance.

Stuck. Stuck in sin, stuck in desires for selfish comfort, entertainment, distraction. Yet, simultaneously, yearning for that selfless, humble, wonderfully rich life of the servant. God, what is wrong with me. What is wrong with all of us??

I'm just going to rant now about this horrible, broken world. Genocide, war, conflict, death and violence and starvation on a massive scale. Did you know that human trafficking is a 80 billion dollar per year industry? It is literally pure profit. There was a famine in Somalia this year that no one knew about. The genocide in Darfur is still going on and the UN hasn't done anything about it because they haven't decided how to categorize the issue yet. Refugee camps in Africa are purposely made to have horrible conditions, and it's costing hundreds of millions of dollars to sentence 5 top leaders of the Khmer Rouge to prison. The one man who was sentenced got only 15 years. The Khmer Rouge killed one fourth of the population in Cambodia in just under 4 years. Thailand, at one point, loaded a small boat of refugees and just set them afloat into the ocean with no provisions, because the country didn't want them.

And still, the dominant mantra of our day is "Follow your heart. Do whatever you desire. That'll make you happy." And people wonder why our world is failing?

I'm banging my head against the wall. Repeatedly. The problem is not the system. It's not those people over there. It's YOU. It's ME. It's US. And this entire world is stuck, stuck, in this never-ending cycle of sin and pain and selfishness, and I'm stuck because I can't seem to get over myself, stuck in this world that's stuck in it's failed institutions of men. I look at people's lives and I'm just overcome with a sense of emptiness. I look at myself and feel like such an idiot.

What's wrong with us? Us. Really. It's us. Godless, directionless, without standards and boundaries. We just do whatever we feel like. We just "follow our hearts". Well, so do corrupt CEOs, fascist authoritarians, drug cartel bosses, and kidnappers.

O come, o come Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel!

Come God, 'cause, dude... for years and years, humans have been trying to fix themselves. It's not working. For years and years, I've been trying to fix myself. It's not working. Even with God, it's freaking hard. But man, I can't do it on my own. I'm stuck. And the only thing that has ever worked for me, even a little, is God. The Great Un-Stucker.

Un-stuck me, God. Ransom captive Israel! God With Us, Emmanuel.