How To Caulk The Sad

I look out at the damp ground and fallen leaves scattered on the back deck. It's coming and I am glad. Summer is ending its long hot run, fall peeking out from behind the curtain, us Oregonian's who love the seasonal change, eager for its entrance. Kitchen clock ticks the seconds and I yearn to switch the clock back to more than one hour this year. To turn the time backward, before electronic devices took us captive, before airlines charged more for less. To children playing free in the schoolyard, no guns in sight, only adolescent kids clueless to a future boxed in fear over safety.

And I see a photograph of a tiny body washed ashore, and I wonder if Heaven is weeping too?How will you answer and please help us move.

If we will not listen to the poor when they cry unto us in their need, God will not listen to us when we cry unto him in our need. 

~R.A. Torrey

It seeps into the soul this world gone mad. I read Ann Voskamp and know what I can do. I sign a petition and give where I can and their desperate faces they haunt me still. As the clock ticks and the soft rain falls from the cloudy sky, I wonder at how busy Heaven is right now and how can that be? In a world gone astray I count what I've been given, thankful for all that surrounds, in the midst of hard there is beauty, if the eyes can only see. This sad heart it leaks so I caulk the tears with gratitude. And the song I woke to this morning, it rings in my ears, it pleads with my sad to look up and say thanks.

The song from my childhood, the lyrics and melody braiding together the past and present. For these are a few of my favorite things and I kneel down under this crushing weight of gratitude. And as the clock marks the passing of time I can almost hear their voices, both seen and unseen, those angels rushing to and fro, a thousand winters melting as Heaven comes down to earth.

Love has hands to help others. It has feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of me. That is what love looks like, 

~Augustine of Hippo~