invisible

I spent much of my afternoon praying today. Unfortunately this is unusual for me. A few different things came to mind as I was praying. Some of you came to mind. A passage from a book called James came to mind as well, it says something like this: “following Jesus takes balls.” Yeah, I guess that’s just my own translation. It really says that following Jesus means following Jesus. It means taking action. It means loving the oppressed and the cast out and the poor, and those experiencing injustice. It means standing up, and alongside those who get beaten down and pushed away. But in my mind, I have the ability to make those things disappear…

It’s hard for me to imagine how my brain has the ability to pretend things as real and as tangible as the jar of starburst sitting on my desk in front of me don’t exist. As often as I glance at this jar, my mind is bombarded with images of poverty and injustice. Graphic pictures of children wounded by car bombs. Blood soaked strips of fabric formerly weaved together as clothing draped over people celebrating liberation in Pakistan only to find that death had made it’s way into the midst of their parade. Unbridled flames that threaten to roam wherever they please leaving a haze occupying the void where homes once stood. People who know homelessness to an extent that my mind could not comprehend. Fathers and mothers who experience stress stimulated by whether or not they will have enough clean water for their children to drink. Yet my mind can conveniently gloss over these realities as if they are not real at all.
Is it because they are far away? In different countries? In different states?
Or does my mind have the ability to not only see past the devastation, injustice and poverty of other places, but here as well?
And if so, what am I not seeing? What has become invisible to me? Might God not only bring those things into focus, but give me the courage to do more than just pray. The courage to help. To feed. To care for. To love. To stand up for. To die for. Is this maybe what James means when he describes the core of what following Jesus is all about?