I woke this morning to find my spirit grieving. My heart crying out with pain to the Lord. Today was a day when I wanted nothing more than for Jesus to come and call us out of this mire we call life, or rather the mire that we have turned this life into.

Why did my spirit grieve today? Maybe it was the "lostness" that I see in so many of my friends, my coworkers, my acquaintances. Maybe the hurt I see in the lives of many other friends and some of the same friends. Maybe it was my own heartache. Maybe poverty. Maybe depravity. Maybe starvation. Maybe the spread of AIDS. Maybe war. Maybe many things that are the result of a fallen world.

My spirit mourns today "Because we do in fact live in a world of ruins. We do not now exist in the element for which we were designed" (Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines). Rather we exist in a half-condition. A condition in which only God--the gift of life in the Son--can bring wholeness.

I am mournful for an world, for a humanity, that is only in part what it was created to be. I grieve for the loss of God's original design, and my grief makes me tired and long for the wholeness that will be found only with the coming of Christ.

Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. We need the wholeness that you bring!