Where was the Christian when the boy needed saving? (Guest post by Joann Hallum)

I was born bathed in blood.

Exposed and helpless, I don't remember the tears and sweat that brought me to this world, the waters of suffering and sacrifice. Those things are my mother's story. I only felt red cold fear.

I am from Adam's seed and with the seed comes the knowledge. Knowledge of good. Knowledge of evil.

I screamed at first.

Evil is dark, frightening and linear, but I can't find the beginning, and I can't find the end. I haven't been formally introduced to it, but I know the black agony of possibility.

Some decide to pick their poison. I listen as he tells me about the places I have run from. I hear how he went to a room of booze and starving brothers. How a fight broke free and he stood to the side. Surrounded by chaos, he griped his beer like he had held his stuffed bear, so many years ago.

A baseball bat headed for his head, wielded by another kid who decided to embrace destruction. The batter tried to take the boy's brains, his body, and everything in it. The boy knew he was going to die, but the bat stopped. He was saved by his cousin, who had pulled out a knife and pressed it to the assailant's throat.

The boy tells me this story while I eat a cookie. He confesses that he would still call his cousin before he would call his church, heroine habit or no. It makes sense to me.

Christians are immortal ones, called to be fearless. So were was the Christian when the boy needed saving?
We run from the dark places because we forget the sweat and the tears, the waters of sacrifice given by the One who covered us again in blood. Jesus's blood allowed us to be born again with Adam's knowledge, but God's Spirit.

Too often we hide under our beds and curse televisions and tattoo parlors. We cover breath mints in Scripture, but ignore the needs of the children without toothbrushes, the infants without mothers, the boys without hope.

Too often I defer to my nature, returning to the place where I was born the first time, the cold place, before I met my Father. It is still so dark in this world, but I'm slowly learning to walk like the immortals do, by faith not sight. Moved by His Spirit, I can wield the double edged sword against the flaming arrows, the baseball bats, the nameless possibilities.

I remember my second birth and I fear no evil.


(joann, you write light into a dark, dark world... thank you...)