I remember when I was making these comics, I had been studying about American slavery, racism, Christianity, and Jim Crow. Shootings were happening all over. Families were being separated at the border. Stories of children in Syria contemplating suicide so their parent’s weren’t stressed out trying to figure out how to feed them were making their way over as our country labeled them too dangerous to allow them refuge. Images of children washing up on the shore. Watching the devastation in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and seeing people I cared about being forced to pick up and start over in a new state.
Then I would go to a little church office and try to plan out songs for the coming Sunday and organize a band to play them, schedule a mid-week bible study for youth whose families were really busy with lots of activities, and write discussion questions about sermons for our discussion groups.
Then I would go home to play with my daughter and hang out with Ashley who was pregnant at the time. And I would feel so weird with such an easy life in the face of all the suffering I was taking in.
I was working so hard, but none of it was doing any good whatsoever to the injustice surrounding me. I wanted to be in ministry specifically to spend my life advocating for some small corner of the pain. But I felt more like a manager working with a up and coming organization. It became hard to deliver.
I felt like a fraud and like I was doing a bad job at everything.
Discovering the practice of liturgy and using liturgical prayer and contemplation was my only source of peace. I was lost at sea, swimming for one life boat, then I would see another and change directions, then another so I would start swimming that way.
Using the daily office prayers and meditating on small amounts of scripture brought peace and stability. It helped me to be still. It brought a real confidence by reminding me that amidst all of the chaos, a just and loving God was at the center, seeing and feeling all of it, and slowly working to bring about peace and justice. Practicing liturgy helped me to see his kingdom at work in all of these tragic circumstances.
It is probably the only reason I am still a Christian.
In our lives and in our prayers, may your kingdom come.
