50/50: How We Paint the World
Andra Day’s anthem is a life line.
“How long will grown men and women in this world keep drawing in their coloring books an image of God that makes them sad?”
22,517 words in the last 50 days and I have little to say today on my birthday, which seems appropriate, because I wanted to set all those words down as a gift to anyone who needed them. And they were for me to say, “I was here.”
I think that’s what most of us want in the end. To feel the impression of our feet in the ground of this earth. To know that we loved and were loved. To know that our life mattered. Many days, I wonder whether that is true as I’m mostly aware at how much better I want to be at loving and how much I worry about the ways that I’ve failed the people I love.
But I woke up this morning to messages from my congregation that started the day with tears of surprise. There were videos from around the world from some of my dearest friends in Africa, Scotland, California and Oregon that kept the tears going. I received big genuine hugs of love from my closest family and look forward to a day of sharing some of my favorite spots in the world with them here in Amsterdam.
It’s all grace.
And I want to live in and from that grace with as much intention as I can in the next fifty years, shedding shame, resentment and fear as I go.
The quote from Meister Eckhart above wraps up everything that I wanted to say these last 50 days. Stop drawing with an image of God that makes you sad. Together, let’s color with an image of God that makes the world glad, using paintbrushes of justice and beauty and grace and love.