Photo: Mandy Mowers
Out of These Ashes
By Amanda Kniha
“All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves; I looked for him but did not find him. I will get up now and go about the city, through its streets and squares; I will search for the one my heart loves” (Song 3:1-2).
Several times throughout the Song of Songs, we find the beloved searching for her lover. She desires intimacy with him. A pastor and friend, Ray Mayhew, says that the beloved symbolizes the church. She teaches us where we find intimacy with God: in plentiful gardens, among God’s people, among the mighty teachers, in secret places, and with a sword preparing to fight for justice.1 Ray says that intimacy must be offered in a relationship, not demanded. When we want to offer intimacy to a friend or a spouse, we sometimes have to go where they are. When they are rejoicing, we rejoice with them. When they are grieving, we go to that place, too. Sometimes I try to demand that God draw near to me, to force intimacy. I get angry when God isn’t showing up. But, in reality, God is asking that I draw near to the places where God is. This morning is one of those times when I sense the invitation to draw near to the places that are dark and uncomfortable. God is there grieving and invites me to draw near.
Our community loves to write, and I began my morning by reading the blog of Sarah, who serves with WMF in Kolkata.2 “Unanswered prayers,” she names her reflection. The cries and pleas for a friend who trades her body for the food that will sustain her each day fill my screen. Sarah’s friend is one of 10,000 in that neighborhood alone whose prayers and cries for freedom seem to be unanswered. I have walked those streets in Kolkata, too, just for a moment. As I read her prayers, my mind goes back to that place: to little girls wearing too much lipstick, tank tops and chunky flip-flops, sometimes smiling through their realities while their sad eyes betray their secrets. It all seems so hopeless. And then I remember that God is there, crying, I think. I let my mind and my heart go back there, too, and tears rush to my eyes.
Next I venture over to CNN to see what is going on in the world. I am drawn to a short video where the current Miss America speaks up about eating disorders.3 She challenges the media for criticizing the recent weight gain of a singer/actress. The celebrity is valued not by her talent or her performance. Her value is reduced to her weight. I think about the illusion of this glamorous life, and about the millions of women who feel like they are defined by their beauty or their weight. I think God is grieved, and I join God.
And then, an article in The Table leads me to explore Judges 19, the story of the concubine and her master.4 In it, a woman is treated as property, is brutally raped and then loses her life when the man who owns her cuts her body up into 12 pieces and sends them to the tribes of Israel — all because the Israelites decided that they could figure out justice on their own. The article talks about the sanctity of life and challenges the reader to go where it is dark and uncomfortable.
I take a deep breath and keep reading.
The FBI estimates that well over 100,000 children and young women are trafficked in the United States today, and the average age of the victim is 11.5 I think of the 11-year-olds I know and love — my niece, my sister-in-law — and just the thought of it twists my stomach into knots. I think God’s stomach is twisted into knots, too. God is grieving, and so am I.
So, I say a prayer and thank God for Sarah Lance. And for those who speak up about eating disorders, for the story in Judges that says so much about God’s love for women, for the voice God has given me and for an invitation to draw near to God’s heart — even in the places that are dark and uncomfortable.
Several years ago in Sunday school class, a little boy asked Pastor Ray if God is always happy and always sad. The boy was trying to make sense of how God who is so full of love could also be present to the suffering. What is beautiful about God is that, in the places of great darkness, God’s tears seem to whisper hope. The grieving in itself is an act declaring that something has gone wrong. It is
compassion that enters in and offers love. Grieving becomes the starting place, the depths from which hope, joy and beauty emerge. This morning, I enter in with faith that, out of these ashes, God’s restoration will come.
ENDNOTES
1 Ray Mayhew, “Adam to Armageddon,” tinyurl.com/c5rax9.
2 Sarah from Kolkata, tinyurl.com/unansweredprayers.
3 tinyurl.com/MsAmericaEatDisorder.
4 Mitzi J. Smith, “Terror In The Night: The Trafficking of a Young Woman,” The Table, Eric P. Sandberg, ed. (Ashland, OH: Ashland Theological Seminary, winter 2009), pp. 7-9.
5 Ibid.
Amanda Knihal serves as Coordinator of Community Care in the WMF USA office. She and her husband, Chad, share life with their nieces, nephews and siblings in a home that houses five adults and nine children.