I'm opening the library. Once the pain of rising early has worn off, I really love quiet mornings at the library and at Kaldis. Making scones, greeting the early morning studiers. The other day--our fake spring day--the birds were loudly welcoming the dawn as I drove to work in the darkness. It was such a nice way to start the day.

I was reading my friend Laura's blog and found this post about Craigslist interesting. I had no idea this was going on. I appreciate Laura's getting the word out there about the issue.

My professor has the flu (bummer), so class was canceled last night. It has been weird weather--muggy-ish and then rainy and cold and stormy. The ride home was traffic-filled, but Tanya and I had a nice long conversation about grace, and about wrestling (not the WWF kind), and I wasn't particularly sad to come home and study (a bit!) & watch Biggest Loser with Court.

Court sent me a link to this new music by Winterpills, which is reminiscent of the innocence mission. Their myspace playlist is my soundtrack this morning.

I solicited help from some friends because next week our school has a day of prayer, and our International Justice Mission group is helping to plan part of the liturgy. One of the professors is sharing about learning to lament, and my soul was fed as I read the lament below, written by Kristin sometime back. As an aside, her most recent post is quite funny and unexpected--about the slow work of building relationships, and pigeons. Anyways, this piece reminded me that intimacy with Jesus is the beginning of allowing God to break our hearts for injustice and oppression, and that as we come to the Savior with our mourning and lament, he hears and is present. Powerful stuff.

My friends, thanks for showing me what it means to follow Jesus--those of you who are willing to wrestle and weep and lament for the broken relationships and people God brings into your life. This is where radical transformation takes place. This is where God shows up. This is where it gets real. As Nacho would say, "Let's get down to the nitty gritty."

"Come and see Lord”

"Come and see and weep with me Lord. See their faces painted with cheap make-up. See the tenderness in their worn out eyes. Weep with me over innocence lost. Weep with me over torn flesh and broken hearts. Weep with me Jesus over girls trapped by fear. Weep with me for the mothers who have lost their daughters. Weep with me over your princesses that are treated like whores. Weep with me so that I know you are with them. Weep with me so that I know their suffering isn’t forgotten. Weep with me because when you weep with me it gives me hope. Your tears bring the safe place for the suffering of the world to reside. Your tears give me and the girls a place to put our doubt, our rage, our isolation, our fears. Come and see Jesus. Come and weep with me.

When I first walked down the street I fell in love with them. I saw the faces of the girls of Sonagacchie and I knew this is where God had me. Know five days I week I have the honor of hanging out with these girls work in the Red light district of Sonagachie. I get to know them and hear their stories and see their suffering. In some ways their suffering is so foreign to me. Many of them were tricked into the trade. An older woman would come into the village and say that they had work as a maid in the city. The parents would agree and send their daughters away. Then their daughter are beaten and raped into submission and made a sex slave. I see hundreds of girls when I walk down the street, each with their own story. They are looked at by society as whore and lower class citizens when most of them are just teenage girls robbed of their childhood.

How many times have I been the Martha? How many times have I come before Jesus and said, “ I am working so hard Jesus. Do you see me? I am working so hard to save these girls. I am working so hard to serve the poor. I am working so hard to be the hero for people! Do you see this?"

My reaction to the poverty and suffering I saw before me was to work harder, to do more, to not let my heart to break to much...to keep moving. And somewhere along the line I lost Jesus. I was so busy trying to prove my goodness and fix the suffering that I missed Jesus.

Then I read of Martha and Mary again in the story of Lazarus. Mary once again falls at the feet of Jesus. She weeps before him and cries out to Him. Then her friends who were mourning with Mary invited Jesus to “Come and see, Lord”. They invited Jesus into their suffering, into the death of their friend, into their hopelessness, into their pain, into their fear. They said, “Come and see.” And in His humility Jesus entered in. The Bible says, “Jesus wept”. The humility of our Savior to enter in. Jesus, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, the giver of life and breath, the maker of time...wept with his people."