The snow is dirty. So. Dirty.

And the woman beside me is eating a too-ripe banana, and the slush and puddles have replaced any sort of magic that big snow brings, and the offensive ordinary is overpowering on this Wednesday.

Sometimes you just know you were created for more than this. When the world seems upside down, and nothing seems right, and your words are misconstrued, and your heart is lonely – you know you were made for more.

And it doesn’t matter where you are in this world — whether it be shopping at Harrods in London, or sitting with the Dalit in Kolkata, or at a bazaar in Karachi, or a café in Paris, or a government issued cubicle in Boston — there are times when your soul screams loud “There’s got to be more than this!” 

And you look around afraid that the inner words were shouted aloud, but as you look around you realize – no one heard them. This is your inner struggle, your shout for salvation.

When the teenager gets pregnant and you’ve tried for ten years to have a baby; when the corrupt co-worker gets a promotion while you sit in the shadows; when the friend gets a raise added to an already high salary; when the one who abused continues abusing; when the poor get poorer and the rich get richer; when the mean get meaner and the meek, meeker.

When the world is upside down, that’s when your heart longs for eternity.

And on this day that is marked — when an indifferent world sees foreheads with the black smudge of a cross, that longing for eternity quite literally makes its way from heart to head. In this upside down world, a cross changed everything.

And through that cross we know we are created for so much more.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11