"The Field of Blood"

"You speak of hope. Shattering blows have buried my hope, my birdsong. My faith, I fear, is periously near extinction." Dunstan Massey

They say a man has 8 to 10 pints of blood in his body. Then why am I still bleeding? The desert can be as beautiful as it is morbid. Looking from the valley below, one sees the sun striking a distant mountain top which appears to be bathed in blood. It is my field of blood, a battleground of broken, twisted bodies. When I was in grade school I had a teacher who used to take us to old indian/frontiersman battlefields. Deserted places that no one visited anymore. We would look for arrowheads and he would tell the stories of my forefathers (indian and frontiersman alike). I could picture the scene.

Now the scene is all too real. Casualties of war, mountains of them. It just never stops, the blood that is. I just keep on bleeding. It covers my hands and when I try to wipe it off all it does is smear. Frankly I'm not sure whose blood it is anymore, mine or those,...........those corpses staring back at me. Begging for battlefield dressings that will never cover the gaping wound that has been ripped in the fabric of the desert. There seems to be no end to this pain. And were it not for his voice I would go insane. "Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters" (Is. 55.1). Sometimes I hate fact that he ever made me feel. "You who have no money, come buy and eat." That he ever made me care. "Delight yourself in abundance.....come to me,....listen,.....live." Because there is so much pain. But I need my pain. God please don't let me ever stop feeling, even if it means pain. (At least then I know I'm still breathing). Our pain is the heartbeat of the desert. Sola Gracia, WHB