A Holy Experience by Ann Voskamp

And there’s no holding this tattered roar back.

I’m angry at sin that smothers children and selfishness that steals human dignity and apathy that infects the hearts of the comfortable. And I pound my own chest.

I’m angry at me.

Angry at how much I want comfortable more than I want Christ.
Angry at how much I want to forget that grimy boy leaned over a garbage heap, wiping his fingers along the inside of food tray, looking for anything left. I’m wildly angry that I want to forget the struggle of the poor so I can pin the next pretty idea on Pinterest.

I’m angry that I’ve seen and I’m ashamed that I am angry and I’m angry that I’ve seen and now I am responsible. More than respons-able – we’re response-bound. Once we have seen the poor, we are responsible — we will make a response. As long as your heart is beating, there’s no such thing as unresponsive. We all look into the face of the poor and it’s either Yes, I will help. Or no, I won’t.

There’s no getting off the hook.

Faith cannot have a non-response. 

We’re either responding with indifference or with intercession, either with apathy or aid.

You can’t look into the face of the poor and just plead the fifth amendment. Your life is always your answer.

I feel sick that I feel so angry. 

Sick that I want to Pin with abandon, that I don’t want to be a witness, that I want someone else be an uncomfortable voice for the poor.Sick that six weeks from now I can grow cold and forget. I have.

Why do Christians make their lives tell all these half-truths? 

On Tuesday, when I wake up on the farm, my throat is sore. I feel like I’ve lost my voice. I feel like my heart is sore.

What do you say in the face of disparity that defies words?

It’s 708 miles from Port Au Prince, Haiti to Miami, Florida – less distance than the length of the state of Texas.

From a city with no sewer system — where every night workers scoop out latrines with buckets and dump the sewage of its 3 million into open, garbage choked ditches cutting through the city – to not only what Forbes named the cleanest city, but the richest city in the United States of America.

The flight isn’t an hour and a half. In ninety minutes, taxing down the runway, we leave the tarped and twigged shacks of people earning less than $750 a year — to suburban McMansions where the average family earns $52,000.

How long can you walk around feeling like you have whiplash? Is heart whiplash what you need to wake your heart up?

Why would we rather turn a blind eye to the needy than turn to the needy and be like Christ? Do we like our own wants and comfort more than we want to be like Christ?