I’m in a Catalyst coma.
Thoughts are running amok and drool escapes as I try to unpack all the wisdom dumped on me in the last two days.
Catalyst is one of those conferences that seriously messes with your brain. It provokes and convicts and makes me stop and think about EVERYTHING.
And in the quiet moments over the last few days, one word keeps running through my head.
broken-FUL
I guess it’s not really a word, but it’s what I hear.
broken-FUL
God whisper’s to me, “Sam you are BROKEN right now. A little beaten down, raw, and vulnerable…and yet you are more beautiful to me in this mess than in any perceived sense of strength or control you think you might have. In your weakness I fill you with my presence. So you are FULL of me.”
broken-FUL
And although I HATE suffering at the time, I’m truly beginning to see its ravishing beauty.
Suffering disrupts life as we know it and flips us off the hamster wheel of self-importance and busyness into a heap of wet fur and woodchips.
Why the wet fur?
Because our water bowl always gets knocked over when we fly off the wheel screaming bloody murder. There’s ego and pride, control and image management hurling through the darkness.
All that spinning and craziness is a messy affair.
But it’s in the mess where he does his best work, isn’t it?
I saw Jason Russell speak today at Catalyst and it reminded me of this truth loud and clear.
For those of you not familiar with him–Jason Russell is the director of Invisible Children–the most watched documentary in the world about the abduction of children who are used as child soldiers by Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). This film centers around a group of Ugandan children who traipse miles each and every night to places of refuge in order to avoid abduction by the LRA.
After Russell’s film went globally viral, (over 120 million views in 10 days)Russell experienced a mental breakdown.
Basically, God threw him off the hamster wheel.
It was embarrassing. His woodchips/wet fur mess moment involved his bare bum running through the street and a global audience just waiting to rip him to shreds.
Jason suffered. Jason went down. Jason’s celebrity status crashed and burned.
But not only did Jason survive the ordeal, he’s now a better leader because of the suffering.
Today, two years later, Jason’s mantle is shrouded in humility, compassion and DEPENDENCE on God. Jason knows the 28 year-old war in Uganda will end only when God decides it will end. And it won’t be because Jason made the War Lord “Kony” famous.
I sat in my chair and thought about Jason.
“See,” God whispered. “broken-FUL.”
Here is a man who had everything, lost everything, suffered and suffered some more, and is now empty-handed offering his everything to Jesus.
BROKEN. BEAUTIFUL. FULL OF GOD.
broken-FUL
And that’s my prayer tonight. I’ve got nothing God. I’m stripped. Bare. Take my nothing and FILL me FULL of you.
Where is God in your mess?
