Well, unless they keep you informed about me while you are in heaven, you may not be tuned in to my conversations with God. After all, you've been gone for some time now. So in case you don't know, I thought I would tell you about my prayer for redemption. Here it is:

God, it seems you are so far away, even as I know you are not. More like I have extracted myself . . . but again, "whither shall I go from your presence? If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea . . . even there you will find me." So, it would also seem that I can't extricate myself far enough. You always go with me no matter where I choose to wander. When I stop, and take a breath, there you are, loving me. Still, this contest, this combat with life is exhausting. It seems more than I can handle.

First, I probably have an exaggerated awareness of my age. I feel like I have lived a long time. Too long, maybe. All of my siblings are gone. Most of my friends, classmates and relatives are gone; many of them younger than me.

I am approaching the end of my life at I believe to be the most terrible and fragile times of this world; at least in my lifetime. I was born at the end of the great depression and lived through air-raid drills during World War II, the trauma of Korea, the waste of human life in the politically manipulated war that was Viet Nam, then again through the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I remember the time when I couldn't even spell Afghanistan. I have lived past the "normal" quota of years.

So, second, I also live now in a culture where we slaughter the unborn like they are cockroaches and do not deserve to live. What was morally right for millennia we now call wrong, and what has been wrong in a thousand cultures before us, we call right.

We have despised the nature of things. We think that it is appropriately sensitive to affirm the fantasy of someone "identifying" themselves as something they are not. Men trying to become women, and women trying to become men, as if manipulating hormones and mutilating genitals and tattooing anatomy is reality; believing nature itself the fantasy.

We have become primitive, reducing ourselves to a society that has yet to discover fire. The notion of morality is "old school," and summarily dismissed. Virginity is looked upon as backward, and profligacy as something to embrace. The values of character, integrity and the mutuality of 'help' have been dismissed. And on top of all this, the world has engorged itself with rabid terrorism fostered by a religion that has no concept of who you really are – no concept at all.

It is amazing to me that you have not destroyed us all like in the days of Noah. We do not deserve to draw a breath, none of us. We have become evil beyond imagination. Perhaps we have always been. As the Scripture itself makes clear . . . "the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it?" And "the LORD saw that the wickedness of mankind was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually."

In my experience, the world has never been really good. This isn't to say that it contains no beauty, for it does. This isn't to say that I haven't enjoyed my life, for I have. This isn't to say that love does not heal, for it certainly can.

Still, I am embarrassed by and ashamed of the culture in which I live today. Not that I haven't haven't helped make it this way. I am no better than the others. Since there is a gigantic log in my own eye, I can't see too good to find the speck in the eyes of others. You have promised not ever again to send a flood, yet please God, send something, do something! Reveal yourself so that there can be no more denial. No more ridiculous fantasy that we can change the way you made us. Bring us back to yourself. Let your sweet redemption come upon men. And may Jesus Christ be praised, and mankind redeemed.

I suppose you're still stuffing yourself at the Marriage Feastof the Lamb, but don't forget me Lizzie Mae, won't be long before I'm sittin' right next to you.

-- PDM

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