Unposted.

I'm posting now, because I'm feeling guilty.

This week, what you've seen in posts have been short, late, and not very well planned or thought out. Why? Because you're only seeing what I hit 'publish' on.

I've written a lot, only to find it was so deeply personal and controversial that I just couldn't find it in me to publish it. Strangely enough, the topics of those posts were joy and witnessing. I've now got large amounts of posts saved to drafts, and other posts, after spending more than two hours working on them, I deleted every last word, content that I had said what I wanted to say, but also content not to send it out into the world. In a year and a half I've never had this much trouble posting.

And now, as I've sat here contemplating what I'm going to do with this post, I've realized the core of what I've wanted to say all week long.

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" by Emma Lazarus (taken from The New Colossus)

They're classic words, the first two lines of which are famously known because they're engraved on our Statue of Liberty. But I'm not making a political statement on immigration. I'm offering conversion. I'm talking about lifting MY lamp, beside the golden door.

I've spoken with them all week long; the tired, the poor, the frustrated, the angry, the worried, the discouraged, the numb, the frightened, the confused, the broken, the sad, the dejected, the rejected, the grieving, the ashamed, the bitter. They've walked into my office, I've walked into their checkout line, they've served my food, they've simply waved as they passed me in the street. There's just so many of them. They're hurting, and broken, and scared... and they just go on.

Someone in a blog recently asked the question of themselves, "Is my witness unacceptable to God?" and reading that question now, I'm convicted. My witness? MY witness? What witness?

I have SEEN what God can do with a heart that's hurting and broken. I KNOW He is a healer. But how can I claim to be a witness, when I never stand before someone needing to be convinced and testify to the events I've seen. Isn't that what a witness does? Singers sing, musicians play, speakers speak, witnesses testify. Typically in our judicial system a witness has no need to testify for the courts when everyone agrees. They are called upon to convince those that don't believe.

So is MY witness unacceptable? I beg God to forgive my witness. People are dying, suffocating under the weight of their sins, and I have failed. "Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", how many times in your life have you experienced the miracle of actually putting your burdens in Gods hands and breathing freely and deeply the breath of peace. The world is no different in that regard. They worry, they're afraid, they yearn for that same deep breath of peace, and don't know how to find it.

God, forgive me. Forgive me for treating the saving of souls with such a lack of urgency.



I've been praying for love; Gods love, to fill my heart for others. I've been practicing offbeat acts of kindness. But I can be the nicest, kindest person in the world, and if I never speak about Christ to those that are lost and dying, they will still die, lost, in the arms of a kind person whose cruelest act was to never speak the words of Life.

May God in His infinite grace keep me from such a fate.