Sometimes despair creeps in during the night and I wake to a world from which all hope and possibility have vanished. It feels as if the sky is roiling with clouds that blot out all light. At those times I long to pray to the God of my childhood, that omnipotent deity who could make everything better if only He chose, if only enough of us prayed hard enough to move His heart. I long to say, “Dear God in Heaven, help us. Won’t you help us, please, our world is coming apart. The people in power have something wrong with them and they are destroying everything.”
I long for a ray of light to suddenly come down through the clouds in response, moving across the face of the earth and healing and repairing everything it touches: the burned hills, the war zones, the polluted waters, the dying animals, the shriveled hearts of the people who have brought us to this pass, the broken hearts and bodies of the people whom they have harmed. In its wake the light would leave green meadows and trees and whole mountains, clear rushing streams and lakes and rivers, plentiful singing whales and smiling turtles and giraffes and polar bears, laughing children with their loving parents, leaders of all genders who nurture and protect life, humans of all shapes and sizes and colors dancing together and singing.
Oh, how I long for this with every fiber of my being. Yet the only way such repair can occur is if we ourselves take charge of it. We are the ones whose hearts must be moved. We ourselves must be God’s hands; we ourselves must beam God’s light out into the world to heal it.
This is a lot to ask of people who are weary and sad and afraid. It is a lot to ask of people who can see how very many things are wrong and how very little each one of us can do.
But we are not alone, because God is not somewhere far away. God is not an omnipotent being who is separate from us. God is the force of life that moves in and through us and in all beings, which we feel in our hearts as love, and which calls us, always, toward healing.
The force of life is so powerful that a tiny seed can sprout into a shoot that grows right through pavement and becomes a plant that breaks the pavement as if it were nothing at all. Love is so powerful that it can survive anything, even death. All we need do is align ourselves with life and with love. All we need do is let God move in us and through us, and God’s light will shine from us, and we will indeed heal the world.