I could write the grocery list of things that easily fall under this category, but, more pervasive is the general fact that much of my life lends to this emotion right now. The most recent event that comes to mind was from service this morning. Since we have begun to go to RBFC Kerri has been able to become involved in a great many things: Bible study, community group, mother's day out, even the latest addition a basic service ministry handing out fliers. Nothing barn-burning there, but involvement. Ironically, for the first time in our marriage, the tables are turned. Near the time of Page's birth, Kerri felt like the caged animal. A baby, no time or energy to go anywhere and I was off gallivanting around Baton Rouge and Texas doing things with different church groups and organizations.
Well, three years later, my life consists of work and time at home. I might make it to church 3 times a one on a good month when kids aren't sick, I'm not completely dead from work or some other off-the-wall scenario hasn't popped up. So, having gone from learning of the great things God is up to with revelatory ministries for the first time to being a corporate slave with no spiritual connections or community has been a slap in the face.
Of course, I hear God speaking to me in all this. Kerri tells me encouraging things at my worst moments when I actually bark about what's going on. At times, God talks to me, but overall, I am either ignoring him (still mad at the way things are) or just plain to far away to hear what he's saying. The worst thing of all is that fact that I know what's going on and am too lazy and apathetic to stop my self-indulgent pity and turn my heart and soul towards him. Lord, please forgive me for my rejection of the circumstances into which you have placed me and my family. I admit I have sinned and fallen short of the calling you have personally placed in my heart and spirit.
Of particular frustration this morning was a small snippet about a Bible-study beginning tomorrow night on Revelation. I thought, and quickly grew excited, about the prospect of seeing something revelatory spring up in the church with which I could get involved. Finally, an opening. I noted it to Kerri after she finished her Connecting Points ministry and went on. On the way home, I asked her about and she asked if I thought she should go. I said, "No, I was planning on going." At this point, she pointed out that it was a women's study. I just shook my head in, you guessed it, frustration. One more thing I thought might break my dark night, rejected.
I don't know what it is that God's trying to get across to me that prolongs this dark night. I have ceased my striving in areas once bordering on idolatry. There are things I have not completed, some of my small tasks. Blogging the thoughts he gives me during Sunday service since many of them make me feel inadequate (the Ephesians book and the dream service in the neighborhood). Yet, I often wonder, like I'm sure many people do, how many of these "ideas" are really of him and how many are of my own invention? Am I really still striving, just in a new way?
Yesterday I was thinking about how, at times, I want to pray and be someone who dances around the house, hands raised, filled with exaltation and free of care what people think. But, it's not about other's opinions, it's about a form of expression that doesn't glorify God the way I feel he deserves honor. Sure, I could easily get lost in thinking that my emphasis here is on my own inferiority and my unwillingness to do what I think is really about myself, but right now, in my life, God isn't the king and more discipline, more gritting my teeth doesn't seem like the answer. To me, that's all just striving.
I'm not trying to be smart about my love for God, because it's not brains that God wants. I'm trying to be real with him in a way that I haven't yet, and, honestly, I don't know what that is. Of course, therein lies the soil of newness...of opportunity. When we struggle and pursue God into the dark, hard places of ourselves, we can feel unproductive, hardened, dead to life because we are facing the strongholds in our life. I sincerely hope part of what is going on nowadays in my life revolves around this growth opportunity, in spite of the fact that my soul senses pointlessness and unfruitful labor.
I wonder, when reading Paul's talk of the fruit of the Spirit, how many of those fruits were present how much of the time. For instance, I think that the apostles, after the Holy Spirit filled them, were so enraptured with God's amazing presence that it was very difficult not to be joyful, patient, kind, etc. But, like so many Christians have faced before, what happens after the high wears off?
Friday, another thought stream that passed through my mind was the idea related to something I saw last week on Heroes. (Yes, I admit that I do not actually only watch the show, but eagerly anticipate each new episode. I have come out of the closet!) This past week there was an interesting conversation between one of the main characters, Petrelli, and Lindermann, an until-now-unrevealed mastermind, which explored an interested dichotomy. Below is the major excerpt I want to focus on.
Lindermann: "Are you happy nathan?"
Petrelli: "Not especially I guess I have a few issues that plague me."
Lindermann: "Oh, dear sorry to hear that. A time comes when a man has to ask himself whether he wants a life of happiness or a life of meaning."
Petrelli: "I'd like to have to both."
Lindermann: "It can't be done. Two very different paths. To be truly happy a man must live absolutely in the present no thought of what's gone before and no thought of what lies ahead. But, a life of meaning, a man is condemned to wallow in the past and obsesss about the future. And my guess is you've been quite a bit of obsessing about yours this past few months."
The notion that happiness and meaning are mutually exclusive is not novel. However, what is presented here, partly as a way of fleshing out the divisive character through the clear use of manipulative thinking, is not directly what I find important. It just reminded me that television often has its finger on the spiritual pulse of some major, current issues. For me, this show just highlighted a question that has been long lingering in my mind related to the relationship of meaning and spiritual fulfillment.
Getting back to the question I posed, does meaning necessarily span time immemorial past and to come? And, how does this related to happiness? Or, more importantly, for the Christian, blessedness?
I often associate a life filled with the Spirit as one that is meaningful. When we are doing something that matters to God and his kingdom, we are drawn closer to him, and as an indirect consequence, filled more and more his Spirit and secondarily cultivate more of the fruit of the Spirit. But, is this true? Does meaning directly relate to the fruit of the Spirit? I guess, indirectly at least, the fruit of the Spirit is something that fills a person after they have met, accepted and grown with the Spirit.
But, this isn't always the case. Newborn Christians often have great fullness of the Spirit, then, as it may occur, go many ways. Some, as John intimated in Revelation to the Church of Ephesus, "have forsaken your first love." (Rev. 2:4) Others, get lost in life, as Christ indicated in the Parable of the Soils, "Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain". (Mk. 4:7) Neither of these cases quite feel like what I am experiencing. I feel, in some ways, closer to Christ than ever before. And, I do not yet possess the wisdom to face the issue of worldly issues choking out the Word without some fear in my spirit.
Beyond these, though, is a lack of knowledge, an emptiness when it comes to my purpose. If one were to ask me, "Why are you alive?" I would have to say, "I'm really not sure." Now, I can hear in the back of my mind people reading this thinking, he's suicidal, his life is without meaning. That's not it at all. I'm trying to say that I believe many people have a clear sense of what their lives are for. God has communicated what their purpose on earth is. For instance, Kerri has received the word, on at least a few occasions, that she is to be the mother of many. Now, she's still not clear on whether that's the spiritual mother, the physical mother, etc, but she has an idea. I, on the other hand, see all these great things, understand what is going on, and never feel called, or, when I feel called, am not presented the opportunity to join these things to which I feel connected. That is the great conflict in my life right now.
I see so many people seeking a sense of permanent change in their lives. People want to become someone else. They desire to be different from before. Whether driven by displeasure with self or the pursuit of more (really closely related if you ask me), people are often motivated by unhappiness to action. If not unhappiness, necessity for certain. So, either unhappiness or necessity cause people to act.
I remember a long time ago, I once stumbled on this basic thought and saw all physical action as a desire for change. For instance, why would a person need to do anything if nothing needed to be changed? They wouldn't. At that point, only desire would motivate action. Yet, desire is rooted in a sense of a need for completeness to resolve the incompleteness. So, in the end, even arbitrary desires are rooted in a need to change the incomplete into the complete. This little loop of logic was interesting but really yielded no clear conclusions as to behavior or activity based on this insight.
So, I looked at it again, this time a little differently, to see that this basic idea coincides with unhappiness as a motivation for action, but did not take into account necessity. People often understand that the pursuit of happiness is a powerful motivator, but, equally as powerful, and often less intentionally focused on, is the truth that necessity is a tremendous force in life. In truth, most of my life is an exercise in dealing with necessity. I paused when selecting the word dealing because coping seems more apropos, but that touches the heart of the issue. What is it about necessity that makes it such a tyrannical force?
Well, part of it is the fact that necessity is often something which requires submission. Most people don't enjoy being humbled and necessity has an utterly incomparable way of doing just that. Indeed, I liked what I found while researching the Greek for the kairos/chronos etymology in mythology. Chronos is often considered akin to necessity and the best verses I noted related to that said,
"Prometheus: But Khronos (Time), as he grows older, teaches everything.
Hermes: Khronos (Time) has not taught you self-control or prudence - yet." - Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 982
I sensed, when I read this, that the lessons that Chronos (time) teaches are things which cannot be avoided, no matter how long we run, because, in the end, they must be learned. Necessity often passes as a double for fate, only fate is tied more closely with the concept of destiny and necessity more closely with possibility. But, between the two is the connection that fate is what will occur while necessity are the conditions required for fate to be completed. In this context, it is possible that necessity is a manner through which God guarantees our destined purpose. Against this aspect of necessity, and most particularly, the undesirable elements of character formation, we most fiercely rage.
But why? Why is it that I reject necessity? Why do I reject what changes God requires me to make on such a gradual, constant basis? It seems like grunt work, the menial transformation designed to rid the soul of ungodly characteristics. In the end, we become better because of our humiliation, but, the process is painful. The longer we hold off, the longer it takes. In my case, I just wonder what I it is I am not humble enough about? Am I supposed to accept the necessary elements of my life without seeking better? At times, I feel that the "way things are" cannot be challenged because that is what God has ordained. Yet, if that's true, then we cannot rage against powers and principalities as we are called to? Where is the line between what is status quo and the illusion of the way things are as construed by deception which must be challenged? What must we truly challenge and what must we accept? It takes wisdom I do not yet have to identify those forces to which we must submit and to which we must offer defiance and resistance.
My lack of wisdom and discernment regarding the true necessities in my life, and, as a result, the amount of time and energy I waste pursing unnecessary things, is probably a deeper source of frustration than what I began writing about at the beginning of this blog. I am tempted to believe that what God wills is the necessary and all else must be resisted, but part of my mind suggests that we may, at times, submit to Satan's will for God's greater purposes. Now, by this I am not saying I think I need to sin to do what God wants. I am thinking more of the situation, like Christ, enduring the mockery of the Sanhedrin and the Roman guards to fulfill God's prophecies, than I am about "disobeying God to glorify him".
Nothing I've touched on today seems like an easy topic, but they're definitely things I have weighing on my heart. Of course, when I see people at church, and they ask, "How are you?", it's hard to really get into it because it's a conversation only few can have. God and I have it all the time, but that leads back to that place of solitude. As he highlighted to me this morning, for whatever reason, community is essential to Christian life and survival. Now, what is it that I have to do in order to find what I need? Why do my necessities elude me Lord? Even in pursuit of you I feel even more strained, longing, seeing more of your glory, but unable to touch you. Such a great burden to desire God will all my heart but have so little of him in my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment