Thoughts, Prayers & Art

Inspired by Ecclesiasticus 45:6–16 & Luke 19:41–48

I stood in the ash of a broken city,
my hands lifted like cracked branches
still reaching for rain.

And He, Christ,
not high on a throne
but bending low 
above the ruin
wept.

He did not weep as kings do,
with detachment or distance.
He wept like a father
watching his son bleed out in a school hallway.
He wept like a mother
pressing her palm against plexiglass
as ICE drags her child from a courtroom.
He wept like a teacher
counting the empty desks
after the sirens fade.

A golden thread unraveled from his hands,
a seam of mercy sewn through fire,
and it found me.
Found all of us,
mothers holding silence 
like swaddling clothes,
children who no longer cry,
the ones who still raise fists
because hope is the only weapon 
they have left.

We are the altar now.
We are the incense.
We are the ones who pray
with dirty faces and unwashed fear.

The temple collapsed long ago,
not in Jerusalem,
but in a strip mall church
that blessed police rifles
while caging the Gospel.

The veil tore again
in a refugee camp at the border
In detention centers
like Delaney Hall
It tore on a city street in Minneapolis,
beneath a knee and a final breath.
It tore in Gaza,
where cribs burn faster than gunpowder
and the world calls it politics.

Still…
He reaches down.
Not to snatch us from the fire,
but to stand in it
with us.

I said: “How long, O Lord?”
He said: “Until you stop hiding 
behind stained glass.
Until your sermons sound like sirens.
Until your altars are built in alleys
and your prayers carry the smell of protest.”

I said: “But I am only one voice.”
He said: “So was I.
And I turned tables with it.”

This is no longer about one day,
Sunday.
This is about every day
someone dies unseen.
Every day silence signs a treaty with empire.
Every day the church locks its doors
and calls it sanctuary.

So I stood,
not tall, but sure.
And behind me rose the weeping ones,
the waiting ones,
the fierce and the forgotten.

We became one body,
tied to heaven by a thread of light,
anchored in rubble,
anointed by grief.

This is the new priesthood:
not crowned,
but called.
Not safe,
but sent.
Not silent,
but singing
songs of resistance,
litanies of lament,
psalms for the rising.

And the thread holds.
Even now.
Especially now.

For the Christ who weeps
is the Christ who still walks,
still weaves mercy through the war zones,
still whispers through sirens,
still dares to bless this burning world
with hands full of tears
and love that refuses to die.

So now
you who have wept,
you who have watched,
you who have waited
RISE!

Pick up the thread.

Walk into the ash.
Stand in the breach.
Become sanctuary where there is none.

Let your life be incense
in the alleyways,
in the courthouses,
in the classrooms,
at the border,
on the block.

Pray with your feet.
Preach with your courage.
Prophesy with your tenderness.

Refuse to be silent.
Refuse to make peace with injustice.
Refuse to worship a false Christ
who does not weep with the wounded.

Because the world does not need another lukewarm church.
It needs you
awakened,
anointed,
afire.

You are the priesthood now.

So go.
Bless the ruins.
Break the silence.
And build the kingdom
between the smoke and the sky.