With Loud Cries

Among his final words on the wooden beams were: ‚My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This proclamation, for me, represents the essential cry of our age. For almost all of the people I talk with, inside and outside the community, this is the core cry of their hearts. This is basically how they and how I experience life. It is my primal scream. Tonight I am starting home-group again. Anybody can come. We gather around and listen to each other. Speak to each other. Try to encourage. Try to help. Maybe pray. But whatever happens, we provide a place where people can vocalize their cry and where we may listen. Almost never do we have answers. Almost never do we have the faintest idea what to say or do. But we listen. Or we try to listen. Sometimes we jump the gun and try to solve the other's pain. This happens almost never out of compassion and almost always out of a nervous anxiety to fix things and make it manageable to our minds. It takes incredible resolve to allow questions to hover indefinitely. I have no patience for the Answer Men. I have no time for the Sirs of Solutions. I can't tolerate the Dampers of Doubt, the Question Quenchers. It's all show. It's all marketing. It's all profit. It's all sham. I'm no longer interested in answers. They're a dime a dozen. Certitude now wreaks of fraud. And I am not ashamed that the people I will gather with tonight are just as confused as I am‚Ķ on the cross before God wailing our unrequited questions. The image is a sketch of mine I titled, ‚And With a Loud Cry‚. Buy my tees HERE and my art HERE. abandoned, church, cross, crucified, david hayward, god, haywardart, ministry, nakedpastor, pastor, questions