Sarah McLachlan - World On Fire

I first heard this song in the early fall of 2005. I fell in love with the lyrics, but the video captivated me in a way only visual images can. It's powerful.

This morning I had my iPod going and this song happened to pop on, randomly, and I was suddenly transported back to all the times I'd listened to it, and reminded of how different I feel now.

I told Conor the other day that I never thought of myself as someone with a "ministry." I've probably dodged the word in any capacity for a long time. Not sure why. But as I think about this song, about the words, "the world is on fire/ it's more than I can handle/ dive into the water/ try to pull my share," I realize that ultimately, that's what ministry is. Pulling up the water for someone else's fire.

I've seen those commercials on television about children dying in other countries because of abject poverty. And I've changed the channel because they were uncomfortable to watch. Somehow, if it's a world away, in a land I can't touch or smell or see with my own eyes, I can justify the need I feel to ignore others' suffering. What is it in us that simply can't step into the shoes of those who are weaker than us? Whose heartaches will somehow tarnish the golden walls we've erected around ourselves?

Sometimes, now, I feel like the commercial. I see it in people's eyes when they don't know what to say, or when they say everything but what seems most obvious, most needed. And my heart breaks, knowing I am looking at myself.

Copeland is surreal to me. I feel her moving around and I know, to some extent, that she is living, that she will be, if only for a few hours or days or weeks. I have no idea what to expect her life to look like on this side of birth. But she has already changed me in so many ways. I don't know poverty or sickness or hunger as the people in this short video do. I can't pretend to and I won't do them the incredible injustice of trying. But I do know suffering. It has come to me in a different package, perhaps with a bit more gloss to it, but praise God, even that's wearing thin.

I don't know what ministry the Lord has for me, or for any of you. I do believe that the root of that idea is simply to love people well, no matter where they are or how they look, what they might believe or how they can help you. This is what Jesus did. And it's what He calls us to do. His suffering was real, intense, and excruciating - a word that literally comes from "crucify." He was a man acquainted with grief, as we are told in Isaiah. If He were not, how would I be able to find rest in Him in my own heartache? God knew that sending a Son who was all God but also all man was the only way He could show us - He relates. He understands. Brokenness and angst, sorrow and despair, were not unknowns to Him.

Perhaps the truest and most beautiful gift the Father is giving Conor and I through all of this is the gift of suffering - the gift of comradeship with a hurting and broken world. Pray that we might be sensitive to His gentle leading as we begin to embrace all that His vision for our ministry might be.