Dance Upon Injustice

In college we sang a song in chapel that had a line about dancing upon injustice.  We danced while we sang it, and it sounded real nice, but most of us didn't really know what it meant, injustice.  I still don't, really.  But I'm beginning to get a better picture. 

And before I go any further, I want to let you know that I am fully aware that the problem that came up last week is 100% what we would call a 'first world problem'.  But that doesn't mean I can't learn from it.  It's much harder to be ignorant to injustice when you live in Thailand.  The dictionary calls injustice a "violation of the rights of others; unjust or unfair action or treatment".  We see it every day here in human trafficking, extreme poverty, immigration detention centers, and lack of access to basic necessities like clean water or education.  We see it all over the world in lives around us: a 30-something father with stage four cancer, an unborn child diagnosed with an incurable condition that will limit his life to a few hours, a child who struggles in their new family after years of abuse and neglect.  But still, I never felt it.

And then a Chinese consulate officer decided to give me a 7 day visa for a planned 10 day trip (we had turned in flight itineraries, hotel receipts, and a letter of invitation among other documents that contained our trip dates). And worse yet, there was no possibility to change it. No explanation, no reason why.  Just the way it is. An outside chance that the reason was that I applied outside my home country.But the fact that others at my school had been given two month visas sort of shot down that theory.  It was just a seemingly random decision by some person that would greatly impact me.  We still don't know if we're going to be able to go, and how the trip is going to shake out (the airline will not change the flight dates).

But for me, the learning came in the hours right after I found all this out. It came in my anger and frustration, my desperation, my fury.  There was nothing I could do.  And it wasn't fair.  And boy, did I feel that.  And right about then, it hit me.  This is a bit of what injustice feels like. It helped me to step back and say, the worse case scenario is I am stuck at home for break, sweltering in Bangkok's intense April heat.  I lose the hundreds upon hundreds of dollars I have spent on the trip.  Only money.  This was (and still is) the worst case scenario.  It's not that big a deal.

But it did give me an emotional glimpse of what the song meant, that God will dance upon injustice.  That there will be no more rights violated. No more unjust or unfair actions. No more death and dying or pain and tears.  No more slavery or trafficking, poverty or abuse.  He is a just God and he will reign.  Come Lord Jesus!