This Sucks, God. What Are You Doing?

I used to live in a pretty big city, where I saw a lot of things I probably shouldn't have seen, and experienced lonely, hurting people participating in desperate and harmful acts, searching for what would make them whole, far far away from the design God intended, far frmo the beauty that they are to behold....now I live in a small town and instead of searching, those who hurt here have given up or have chosen to cover it up by appearing to do what they "should" according to small town rules.

It seems so strange to me that one of the first questions we are asked when we meet new people is, "Have you found a church?." Yet, even in the physical church buildings we've been in, there is no evidence of the "church" at all...

We didn't even pray in the service we went to today, and I was basically ushered out into the nursery with Mayah. She wasn't even crying.

I am so discouraged. I have never been anywhere more spiritually dead in all of my life...even the fakey church I grew up in was more alive than the zombies we see zoning out in the dead services that teach against sin over and over and over. What poor horrible people we are. DON'T DO THIS AND DON'T DO THAT OR YOU'LL GO TO HELL. REPENT! HE'S COMING!
Would they blanch at the thought that they are Jesus's favorite one? That His desire is for them to come to Him and experience real life? Or at least to hunger for it...Here, people are expected to go to church and they go, for no other reason.

What causes such boredom in the spirit? What did these preachers start off like? How did they get to a place of monotone recitation of some song in some hymnal...was there never any excitement? Is it all they want, to have a few people fall asleep in their pews? Oh, heavens if the spirit did show up, we'd all probably have a heart attach or be accused of really being drunk as the apostles were. Was there ever a vision of being that kind of church?

Oh, Father, where did you bring us? What is this ghost town? Have you ever been here?

I have this horrible fear that I will become just as dead, just as bored, and just as judgemental if I become involved...I know that already sounds hypocritical, but I have cried at each service I've attended, wondering where on earth are we going to be fed, are there any people our age who share our interests or values? Why did God bring us here?

I seriously feel like I've stepped into the twighlight zone, like it's some huge black hole that swallowed up any hope for a future for this place...I had no idea that places like this actually exhisted on earth...how naive of me to think that with the progress of today, there would not be some left behind or some who chose to stay. Not that these people are any less...but there is such a sadness, a hopelessness...it seems they've just given up...there isn't really anything good anymore. I wonder why...it's as if they've been forgotten and so, they've forgotten themselves.

It sucks.