desperate

1945. German concentration camp, "Bergen-Belson". the words of Lieutenant Colonel Mercin Willet Gonin DSO.

"It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we wanted. we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and i don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that i could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. i believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. i saw a woman dead on a post modern table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity."

and all of the sudden i am very aware of my humanity. i, we are all "spirit, bound by flesh, held up by bone and trapped in time." no matter how well you can sing, dance, cook, run, read, speak, paint or play we are all desperate for something. i think this is a universal truth. we are all desperate for something.

and i've found

that the story of the gospel of grace fits my desperate soul like a key.