Journal 2019but

All day long I sit quietly and listen as people pour out their emotional pain. It’s my job, my calling. But when I read that seven churches in Nigeria were burned and 200 believers killed, I feel compassion overload. It’s too much suffering. I can’t carry one more emotional burden.

I see a port hole opening into a world of dreadful pain. To protect myself, I sometimes need to shut the door to the portal, turn around, and enjoy the beauty around me. My side is bright and airy and filled with rainbows. Through the portal is death and skeletons and oppression. I can’t handle seeing all that misery.

I know the portal is a guardian protecting my heart. “No more,” he says. “Your heart needs a rest.”

Thanks, Guardian, but I have a job to do, and Christ says He’ll make a way. I cannot turn my back on my calling, yet I also recognize the need for self-care. Even God took a break from His work when He created the universe. I’m allowed a period of guilt-free rest.

As I just sit with my savior, He urges me to look through the portal again. The ugliness I see is merely an illusion, a scrim. He lifts the curtain, and I see heavenly beauty that surpasses the earth. The sick and the wounded are all bound up in the scrim–a temporary condition, brief in the light of eternity, a momentary affliction.

I see God’s plan as bigger than Satan’s fury. I see glory in heaven and rejoicing that martyrs have found their way home, and those left behind get to share in His suffering. God is victorious! And my burden feels lighter and my compassion returns.