Trees were a fist, shaking themselves at the clouds.

A persistent image is ingrained in the back of my mind, nagging my waking dreams. Hauntingly and relentlessly it pursues me yet draws me to it. Its wretchedness has a lingering beauty that probes my mind for meaning. Inexplicably I sit here, unable to peal my eyes away. What is it that keeps me here?

Almost two different trees, you share the same trunk, though that is the only company you keep. Your bark is rough and unkempt, your limbs have long since stopped reaching. A stark silhouette across an even starker sky, your body is naked and exposed without covering. Somehow I always end here, unable to go forward for you block my way.

It is as if I have made this pilgrimage for you alone. Struggling, I try to ignore you, but you persist, I know you exist. Although I don’t want to accept, you give me your sadness, your despair, your hopelessness, your tragedy. What am I to do with your burden?

What good can come from Galilee? But yet I keep returning to you with something that I cannot explain. I want so badly to choose hope, to believe that spring will come. I run to you, hoping to see just one bloom, just one breath of oxygen to fan my meager flame. Irrationally, I place an ultimatum before God. Renew this tree, restore my belief in miracles, give me a faith in your ability to regenerate, to make all things new. Let me believe—and not only believe but see—that you care about your children deeply, passionately. That you will not let them wallow in grief, tortured by pain and joylessness. That you can take the worst, the most dire, the most hopeless and work it to good. That you can move in mighty and powerful ways. That you want more for your children than just helping them to get by, but that you want to take their burdens upon yourself and help them break free of the bondages of sin, depression, worldliness, hurt, pain, resentment, insecurity, greediness, unforgiveness, doubt.

Where is the God I serve? Where is the merciful Jehovah, slow to anger, abounding in love, steadfast, unchanging? Where is He in the world, among the warring factions, among the suffering poverty, the starving populations, the forced slavery, the destitute and oppressed, the depressed, the unhappy, the dying? Where is God in world politics, in the heathen, in the fundamental, in the liberal? Where is God in the Gaza strip, in the West Bank, in the child factories in China, in Darfur, in New York City, in the ghetto, in the country, in the suburbs? Where are You in my life? I try to be like You, but who are You? I have let a lot of things slip--show me what it is that is keeping me from You. This world (desperately) needs a Savior, this nation (desperately) needs a Savior, this Church (desperately) needs a Savior, this decripit, sinful being (desperately) needs a Savior. Are You in Focus on the Family? Sojourners? with the Pope? the conservatives? the pacifists? George W. Bush? the new monastics? the liberals? the gays? the Jews? the emergent Church? the Lutherans? the Pentacostals? the Church of Christ? the Amish? the Mormons? the religious right? the 700 Club? Patrick Henry University? Bob Jones? Messiah College? Where does one find the Truth amongst so many truths and lies? Why is it that your Church is often so corrupt, so fallen, so deceiving? All I want is to see You, unadulterated from all human bias. To see You clearly, accurately, without error or blur. I don't want the God of social justice or the God of morality or the God of love or the God of zealous anger, but You in everything You are. My human mind cannot comprehend. But yet You are. You changest not, yet my perceptions do. Perhaps you are always in plain view, but I have not yet learned to see you.

A bloom on the tree. Now bloom in my life.