Life in this world will eventually demand a heavy price. No matter your age or education, your nation or financial circumstance. A sudden unexpected tragedy, the slow erosion of stress, the stinging silence of personal defeat, the exhaustion of survival, the grief of loss, failure, rejection, depression, and loneliness.
Pain is a universal language—a relentless force, wanting to break us.
Sometimes pain is even “deserved.” Still, we are Designed for an Anchor in these “storms” we all encounter in this present realm.
There will be storms. “Self” with its countless slippery shape-shifting strategies—won’t ever be quite enough.
What “isn’t” the Answer? Mind-blocking, or cleverness, or guts. Not vengeance, or depression, or anger. Not fear, bitterness, or drugs, not entertainment, or quitting. Those “answers” are in the wrong dimension.
To paraphrase the great mathematician Pascal, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in every person’s heart.” Humans need the real Anchor.
GenZ Mandy’s note to GenZ:
Lonely in a sea of faces
Like “the only kid there wearing braces”
Awkward in my latent skin
Always outside looking in
Too shy, too loud
Too tough, too proud
Careless where it mattered most
Caring where it didn’t, so
I noticed me, but rarely them
Though Lights were on, my sight was dim
That was me in my early teens
With a catalog of selfish dreams
I would have left the Garden Green
To be plugged in to the Gray Machine
To clamp down on the fuel hose tight
And suck on it till it sucked me dry
But You, Lord came and intervened
Not with loud or flashing screens
But by an inner drawing You drew me
Didn’t know You, but you knew me
And when you called, when I took heed
About-face turned and saw my need
It was all You from the inside out
Who took a dead seed and made it sprout
Now I can’t unsee
I can’t un-feel
I’ve dined on fake
But I’ve tasted Real
So I have a story and I have a plea
For what can’t be unfelt or be unseen
God, you drew me and you draw me still
From the inside out by your own Will
What you did in me, do now in them
Take broken pieces and watch knees bend
Turn hearts of stone to hearts of flesh
Hope dawns from ashes, stale turns fresh
Seeds can grow, we don’t know how
But that You draw from the inside out
Heaven breathes and life begins
Blood-stained, snow-white, ended sins
My story goes on, daily now
Weak flesh can rise that needs to bow
But from the day I called you, Lord
You have been my great reward
My life is changed, that is my song
My weakness yielded shows You strong
Transformed beholding Jesus’ face
Means seeing “there go I” but for Your grace
Gifts abound but that’s not why
You’re good to me and a good guy
No one can do what you have done
In me, through time, in anyone
It’s Otherness poured from your being
Of things we can’t un-feel, can’t unsee
that make us whole and make us free
That give us wings and make us Believe
SystemOrEcosystem.com describes the Designer of our Round Rocketship, and the Designer’s Solution…
