Turn and Face the Strange

I'm sure everyone knows what happened last night. I watched the results roll in, unsurprised. But then, as ABC news rolled clips of different people reacting to the election, and then John McCain's concession speech, and finally President-elect Obama's acceptance speech (perhaps to my family's dismay), I felt hope. Do not get me wrong. I did not endorse Barack Obama as a candidate for the president. He and McCain both had irreconcilable problems with my ideals, obliging me from voting in a system that I already have irreconcilable problems with participating in. But last night on my couch with my housemates, I watched history roll past the television screen. And as I watched, I realized--the game has changed. In the next election, it won't just be the usual suspects. This is the beginning of a new age, one way or another. Years from now, looking at the line of Presidents in history books, there will be a sudden change in their faces and names. And because of that change, and not because of Barack Obama, our nation is the better. One of my managers at work, a black woman named Tina, said, "I am PROUD to be an American today. I never thought I'd see the day. Maybe my children, or probably my grandchildren. But never me." A black friend a year younger than me agreed that not even he expected to see it.
This is the new age.

Subject change.

It's a dark rut I've been caught in these past couple months. I've not fought against inactivity or been passionately pursuing the Kingdom or being vigilant against sin. And I know, I need a change. I need it so badly. I need to take a step out from the mudhole I'm sinking into. And why don't I?

Because I'm terrified to know what God could do with me once He has all of me.

I understand this rut. It's familiar to me. I might not be happy about it all the time, and it may hurt, and I may be indulging in sin, but Christ can forgive sinners, and I am no exception. But to be free from that...to fully understand that I was a bearer of the Image of God first and a sinner second...that is so strange, and so frightening. It's so easy for me to embrace that I am a sinner and that Christ came to forgive me. It's so much harder to understand that I am created in God's image, and Christ came to reconcile that Image in me.

Christ, You terrify me so.

A Native-American spoke in chapel this morning. From some of the things he said, he seemed to be a mystic to an extent, talking about how Creation speaks for its Creator--that leaves and animals and wind all speak for God. And this is something that I've believed for a long time.
But it's been so long since I've sat in the wind and listened.
And I really need to.