It matters

Out of the depths I cry to You

In darkest places I will call

It sounds cliche, I think. To say that a pillar of my life crumbled when my dad died. The world kept spinning and I emerged, exhausted, into the dusty disorientation of grief.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve known a few things for sure. And one of them is that the fight for justice is a holy one. That devoting myself to working for God’s kingdom to come on earth matters.

And so, the questions were hard. Not really “Why would God let this happen?” But “Does this work still matter when everything feels so unfair?”

I yelled at God a little, but mostly ignored him. I truly thought the isolation of covid plus this unmooring might mean the deconstruction of my faith. And so I choked on the dust, stumbling awkwardly, and tried hard to hear that it mattered.

Incline Your ear to me anew

And hear my cry for mercy Lord

I wanted it to matter. I wanted to feel normal- like my passion hadn’t been misplaced, wasted. But it was so, so quiet.

And then Jesus spoke from two seats away. We were huddled together, adoptive parents with different stories, holding each other’s  brokenness and soaking up each other’s wisdom.

He read from Matthew 19 and my breath caught in my throat. That’s you, he said to our ragtag little assembly. It’s hard. So hard. But what you are doing matters.

Something in me broke open with those words. And in this week away from everything normal, I felt loved by Jesus in a way that I hadn’t for almost two years.

And so we carry on. Though everything still feels so unfair. I know that if my dad would have lived for 20 or 30 more years, he would have done a lot more good for a lot more people. That still makes me mad. 

But I know too that our faithful God hears my cries for mercy in my barrenness. And I know for sure that even though it’s hard, so hard.

It still matters.