Overwhelmed

I am laying in bed at 4 in the morning in a city with millions of people. For some reason my mind keeps replaying the events of yesterday, the people I encountered, the things I saw from the top of the 103rd floor of the tallest building.

And I am completely overwhelmed.

And it hurts.

My mind is trying to wrap itself around the fact that there are so many people in the world - and they all matter. Maybe not to me, or to you, but they matter to their family, to their friends, and to God.

Think of your eyeball. Now think of your body. Now think of your whole family, and everyone you know, and the whole world. Do you realize how small your eyeball is? How insignificant? Your eyeball means nothing to anyone else. Yet, your eyeball is so important to you.

I think that's like people to God. [[I meant in importance. I mean, I guess we can think about it like that. They're all like God's eyeballs. Body parts, really. And they all have a purpose. They can all be used. ]]

This place is huge. This city alone blows my mind, I'm forcing myself not to think beyond.

I am overwhelmed by things I cannot understand or begin to fathom. The sin, the bad - why things are "sin" or "bad". Why it matters who I am when there are 7 billion other people in the world. Why it matters who I am in love with. How God can know and care for each person. 

Right now, I am overwhelmed. I have never felt such a degree of overwhelming burden. I am consumed by the pain and the hardship of this life. The desperation, the brokenness, the need to work. The disease, the death. I am overwhelmed with the fact that every human on this earth is just like me and trying to find purpose and meaning. Trying to be loved. I am overwhelmed with sadness that I can't know them and love them...and that people lose meaning to me because there are so many and I know I can never know them all.

I am overwhelmed with an existence that seems completely pointless in every way.

And yet... I am overwhelmed by an awesome relentless God who gives it all meaning. I am overwhelmed that He loves me. That he hears my prayer. That he answers my prayers and continuously guides me and that things that happen are not coincidence but they are orchestrated by a God who has my best in mind and my future in his hands.

I am overwhelmed with awe of the details of the people. Of the details of the trees. Of birds and mountains and plants that provide food.

I am overwhelmed of his protection. His provision. Of his miracles that I see, but only when I look for them with my whole heart.

I am overwhelmed by his grace. By his strength. That he is the one who is the soul reason I can resist temptation and that I desire to. That His Spirit in me tells me things about people that I would never otherwise know. 

I don't understand. I hate this life, this existence, and I am overwhelmed. I have no choice to live it just like everyone else.

But as much as I am overwhelmed by the bad, I'm overwhelmed with the good.

Overwhelmed with pain and confusion. But overwhelmed by a faith in a loving God and overwhelmed by a trust that He is in control and will make all things beautiful when I surrender all to him,

Overwhelmed.

I have faith that God can and will do abundantly more than I could hope or imagine, in me and through me..but right now I can't do it. I can't do this life.