i need to feel again. i was afraid, but God i think i'm ready now. not only for the sake of my music; for the sake of You. and me in You.

i won't cave in this time.

birdcage religion.

so slowly I'm losing
who I've sworn to be.
a promise in pencil
that years have made so hard to read.
I've spent my life building walls
brick by brick and bruise by bruise.
a birdcage religion that whispered me to sleep.

time is spinning silk
that coils ruthlessly;
with the devil's patience,
it binds my hands so quietly
that soon it becomes a part of me.

so soften these edges and straighten out my tie
and help me remember
the hope that i have compromised;
please be a broken record for me.

(sleeping at last)

a thief in the night!

except, it wasn't Jesus, it was just that. a thief.

i was angry, and with good reason. anybody in my shoes would have responded with bitterness, confusion and a yearning for vengeance, for justice. i wished to know who it was, and i wanted him to be found, to be punished. i'm usually not one to ask God the "why?" sort of questions, but this time i could not help but wonder. i thought i had learned my lesson from dealing with theft already earlier this year. so this struck me as a little ridiculous, a little too far. how did this even happen? what is there to even gain from this? to learn a lesson? this was definitely pushing the envelope for life lessons. too costly for an epiphanous experience, if you ask me.

the truth is- i didn't have one. there was no deep, fulfilling lesson to be uncovered from this; maybe a little self-control over my temperament at best, but no life-changing light-bulb moment that made up for the value of my loss. my laptop is still gone, and i still want it back. i still want the thief to be found, and i want our belongings returned. but i did remember this: "culture of entitlement." we are living in a culture of entitlement. and i saw how deeply i have been poisoned by this ideology. i am entitled to justice; i am entitled to anger and hate under such circumstances. even the idea of theft is based on this notion of entitlement - that i am robbed of what i had been entitled to.

and you know, this may be true. ownership is not intangible. in this country it is, or can be for the most part, measured and defined by exchange of currency and monetary values: i paid for it, and therefore it belonged to me. i earned it, the thief didn't. yet in the same way, Jesus lived his life never receiving what he truly deserved. self-entitlement, whether deserving or not, was ultimately not of much value to him. and that opens grace. it opens love. but instead, in my self-entitlement, i reacted in hate- murder in sheep's clothing.

entitlement is not completely false. that's why we're called to deny ourselves. to expect something in return to balance out my loss would defeat the purpose of... a loss. and in a way, i guess there's a reason why it says that He gives and takes away, instead of the other way around. if He always took and gave, it would be easy. but He took away. it did suck, and it still sucks. i haven't received anything as reimbursement, and i'm still bitter about the loss. i want my computer back. but this was the silent response to my "why?" question. yet entitlement is also not always true. am i entitled to grace and love? the fulfillment of hope?

maybe. but we are all thieves in the night. and yet while we as earthly thieves take to gain and steal and make things even, Love came, and will come, to rob us of our pains and shortcomings.