#OrlandoUnited - Facing Limitations and Inadequacies

While reading a number of painful responses to the homophobic terrorist attack in Orlando Florida and reading about the victims, I find myself at a loss for words. I struggle to find words to address the pain and injustice and evil of this situation. I am not a member of the LGBT community and I live miles away from this tragic event which give me pause to ask if it is even appropriate to add my words to the conversation. So I stay quiet. In doing so St. Antony comes to mind:

‘He who sits alone and is quiet has escaped from three wars: hearing, speaking, seeing: but there is one thing against which he must continually fight: that is, his own heart.’

I have no connection to this event. I am disturbed and appalled by the actions taken by a sick man with an easily acquired arsenal of weapons. I do not know what to do. So I sit alone and remain quite. Not because I condone such violence or that I am not heartbroken, but to humbly admit that I do not know the way forward. I am confronted with my own limitations and inadequacies knowing that I still feel unequipped to be a man, husband, father, pastor for the world that we live in.

Lord in your mercy.

Why didn't Saul eat?

In the story of Saul's conversion to Paul, ​there is a little detail that is mentioned. After he was blinded and lead by the hand to Damascus, Saul neither ate nor drank.  

This may not be a big deal. Perhaps he did not eat or drink because he did not have anything to eat or drink, being a guest in the town. Perhaps he was fasting as a way of repentance. I don't know why he did not eat or drink, but perhaps it was the result of a broken heart. ​

There was a time in my life when my heart was broken and I really could not eat or drink much at all for three months. I lost 20 lbs over the course of the fall of my junior year in college. I was a mess. You too may have experienced heart break and perhaps, this something that Saul was feeling. Heart break. ​

For years this man sought out to do Gods will only to discover on that fateful journey to Damascus that he in fact was persecuting the God he sought to serve. He was convinced that he was doing what the Lord required of him, when in a vision he was told that he was doing everything but.

In a sense, Saul was heart broken. His world was turned upside down and all that he knew in the world was called into question. He was in total despair, hopeless, and heart broken. Frankly, eating and drinking were the last things on his mind.  ​

There are a few times in my life where my world was turned upside down and all that I knew was called into question. Most of them theological, but all had practical implications. Maybe Saul is fasting. Maybe Saul did not have any food. Or perhaps maybe Saul desired death because he was ashamed of what he had done and felt his heart was too broken to go on.