Many people I know are big time fans of movie watching. Every once and a while, I myself like to sit down and take in a story that makes me think - I'm a thinker...all the time I ponder. One of the most epic movies in my lifetime that touched many people's realities was the Green Mile. Everyone has their favorite character, with the smallest being Mr. Jingles. The center of the story focuses around John Coffey, a larger than life man who has been put on death row to die for a crime he didn't commit. The catch is that John is what you would call a faith healer. I have always been drawn to John and his amazing ability to intensely feel the sadness, confusion and gripping deception that this world takes on through the tainted start of humanity's being, absent from the knowledge of God or relationship with Christ. At the risk of making others get the impression that the things I am about to say or do say are insane, I am going to make myself vulnerable. There are genuinely moments when I can identify with John Coffey's thorough sensitivity to the brokenness of this world and the individuals that have their existence in it. Day or night I watch the chaos. Although everything whizzes by, things in my heart, in the mind, in my spirit and body begin to become unhurried. Its like when you watch a subway train arrive into the station as it emerges and gradually retards, coming to a stop. Time regresses itself to a slow pace. Every being in creation surrounds me, active in its own way. And yet, I am endowed upon with the feeling I am alone, fully aware I am not. At those moments, just like John Coffey, I literally physically feel everything in my body, every cry of the world, every pain, every tear of joy and sadness, of celebration, fear, vulnerability, the courage, the cowardice, the struggles, the victories and the failures. I ask myself in these times: "Imagine if you really did forsake God when you wanted to. How would you have lived life like the world, knowing the weight of all of these experienced and what life entails without God? - The living hell of just being a "good person"... and the tremendous risky responsibility of trying to carry your own salvation?"
Please note, I am not saying that these missing individuals are unredeemable. Its the burden for them that I feel.
Its at these moments when I am priviledged to what comes with this gift of empathy that I face a deep sense of sadness and larger than life humility. I cannot change and touch the ill realities of people's lives alone. I am so thankful that God is with me to reach down into the existence of ever being He has created. he is the one who can speak to their despair through my words and actions, drowning them in the hope of Christ as well as empowering with a new understanding of what it means to be courageous. To be re-defined by Christ. To risk a life choosing Him - less of me for more of Him. Every day spent away from God is another day a peice of the life you have been given dies. A piece of the life that one lives thinking that it will give fulfillment causes death. As one strives for everything but God, one slips away slowly instead of being given God's daily breath of life --- Remember to Breathe.
God gives me the ability to see deep down into the piercing rawness of who these people around me are - who they are when no one's looking and who they are when everyone's looking but no one notices. I have no idea why god has done this in me other than to simply keep me on track with the mission He has given me; bring back the missing and be a re-builder of those who do belong.
Every time I have these experiences, God builds in me a deeper world-view
I begin to understand the fragility of humanity on its own.
I begin to realize my own fragility that I behold in myself.
I realize how much I need God daily.
I am only a hero when I admit that.
Note: All blogs and photographs taken by Natalie M. Steele are protected. Use of pictures taken by NMS Photography, without permission is seriously not recommended.