The clouds bunch like a blanket with heavy folds, covering the city.
Often there are moments like this, though the heavy blanket rests on the shoulders not sky.

---

This burden, the brokenness of the world, is a weight the weather can’t reflect
only the heart can confess.

…
they’re social issues
…

A blanket tightly stitched into society.
Burdensome, they make the shoulders slump.
A weight beyond the self.
…
It destroys
It decays
…
An eternal blaze
…
Watch the blanket
Entering the fire
Burning
…
Smoke rises
Clouds release
Ash rains

Social issues, they’re a blur of political, economic, cultural, environmental, psychological and spiritual needs that collide in a firework display. In the blaze, it’s difficult to distinguish on which side hope resides.

Is hope an enemy
a spark of fleeting existence
or:
Is hope God-sent
a light explosion that will abide
lasting long into the darkest of nights

Studying social entrepreneurship in India, experiencing poverty firsthand in developing nations, walking by homeless on the street, visiting the lonely and isolated in nursing homes, gazing into the eyes of empty and vacated souls facing death, divorce, depression… standing alongside those suffering, those struggling, those lost and looking for something … their souls not satisfied, secure or settled… all of these realities are confronting, challenging, but most of all – they’re a call. 

A call for change.

I see desperation, it sits on the shoulders of society. There is a despair that reaches deep into the abyss where our souls have been swallowed whole. I wonder how many fall into the abyss, when they’re so close to surfacing. Our souls search for a source of light that is secure, that will shine into the true heart of our own brokenness. Yet our souls also hide under the blanket of burden; we sit in the shadows of oppressing darkness.

Your soul might see, but does it breathe?
Your eyes might look, but do they blink?
Where is your light? your hope? your dreams?
Where is your true identity?

Oh how quickly those clouds cross the sky, bringing confusion, foggy judgement, a burden that seems too hard to bear. How temporal the daylight of our lives, when we live exposed to the seasons.

…
Where is expression when emotions are folded into blanket layers?
…

What might pull away the protections we make, the temporary clothing and coverings of shame? How can we expose change? I wonder why we bury our burdens. I wonder there are so many silent sufferers, those who struggle and shoulder the social issues we see. I wonder how what we see influences what we believe.

…
Do we believe there is hope for humanity? or do we make an enemy of hope?
…
If hope was here, what would we see?
If our core was healed, what would we believe?
…

What can call us to open the eyes, and not to close the mind to what is to difficult to see in the fluctuating daylight? In the daylight of our lives, when the shadows pass by, there is true light that we can find. Hope is there. The sun is strong in the breaking – the entrance and exit, the exposure and essence – as dawn, day, dusk all reveal something beyond a ball in orbit. See, here. A ball in orbit. Remember the science?  The sun doesn’t orbit the earth, the earth orbits the sun.

…
We forget, because what we see can sometimes deceive.
We forget, because what we believe is what governs reality.
We forget, because what we can’t see is what is true about humanity.
…

If hope is the sun and humanity the earth, then hope doesn’t orbit humanity – no – humanity orbits hope. Hope is the core, the constant. Hope is here. Yet, for humanity, the human in their motions, hope requires peripheral vision, perspective beyond what we see here and now.

What is the core of hope? What is the hope for the human soul?

See, there is a true light that has overcome the night, leaving remnants likes stars that come as a twinkle in the eye, of a hope locked inside, the true Son who enters the souls confines. This is the sun, the one and only Son, who was sent as a spark by the galaxy Creator. Through the Son victory was won, the darkness overcome. Now by the Spirit you can hold hope in your soul: the Son-spark, lighting the darkness, sealing the brokenness, and stripping back the blanket layers so a new covering may wrap you in love and grace, an embrace that keeps the galaxies in their place.

Though the unseen might seem like a passing breeze, for those who believe: 
the unseen holds a burden-free weight 
securing the heart in a hope
for eternity. 

There is a greater call for change than the social issues we see. There is an interaction with hope that touches the temporal and enters the eternal. Where the weight of the world meets the weight of eternity.