I am angry, and I am hurting, and it has taken this long to put into words how I feel about the attacks on Beirut, and Paris. It took anger, anger at the leaders of our state governments to act as a catalyst; anger, frustration, and pain.
I was always one of those strange children, just ask my friends. Whenever we got one of those stupid writing prompts 'If you could go back in time...' My top two answers were that I wanted to visit Beirut when it was still known as the Paris of the Middle East, and I wanted to watch the 1980 Olympic Hockey games. Beirut captured my imagination when I was a child, and Paris has an inexplicable emotional link, primary through my mother and her stories of my Great Aunt.
Today Gov. Abbot signed a letter to President Obama stating that Texas was not willing to house anymore refugees from Syria, and I got angry. Not only were these two cities, two cities of light, attacked, but the very people fleeing those who had attacked these cities were now being persecuted because of the land of their birth.
Yesterday the children led the service, and one of the hymns was Here I am Lord. I mention this because there is a line in the hymn 'I will break their hearts of stone, give them hearts for love alone'. My heart is breaking, and tonight my only pray is this:
Lord, Grant us the courage to be bold enough to offer the same grace offered by Egypt to your son.
In the past 96 hours I have heard God cry.
May we be bold.
