The Sojourn.. We are all sojourners.. a band of ragamuffins wandering this earth. We may put on faces, we may even convince ourselves we're something more than wanderlust ragamuffins, but this is the core of who we are. We climb, we fall, we walk in search of something, and rarely know who we truly are at the innermost depths of our being. If we look in the mirror, to our truest selves, we may see something which makes us recoil in disgust, or perhaps something that makes us want to jump up on a platform and shout, "Look at me!" only to see that there is only one person watching.. and we don't know who they are, or why we try to please them. The rest of the earth seems not to care much, except to the extent that you bring it pleasure. But this one.. this mysterious one haunts you, both scaring you and drawing you. So long as the world has it's pleasures and passing fancies, many theories appear as to what this presence is in your life. Is it your spirit guide? Is it what relgion calls its god? Or is it a nothingness? No, it is not a nothingness... for as meaningless as things appear, there is some reality beyond what we see. Whether we believe it or not at our times of climbing and falling, we know in the depths of us that it is undeniable. And we spend our lives searching...at times thinking we've found it, only to have it slip away. What is it? What is the truth? What will bring the genuine and lasting peace deeply seeded within? With all religions and beliefs calling out that it is the way... beginning to all look alike.. what is the truth? What runs the deepest? What stands unique? What is really the answer.. I have not found that answer in religion, I've not found it in church attendance, good morals, respected character, esteem of peers, money, friendships. I've had my fill of each of those, and nice as they are, I still was a depressed and aching soul, bordering on suicidal. Did I get saved and find the answer? No. See I knew the Bible like the back of my hand and I spent a lifetime claiming to know God, and actually believing in Him, wondering why the words I spoke and sang were hollow, why there was none of that promised joy, fulfillment, and such and so. I knew the Bible promised that to those who would follow Christ, but I'd tried that and it still was not working. I wanted to follow what He wanted, but I was always one step shy of truly believing it.. why? The message of the Bible and of Christ calls on us to surrender everything, and that everything means not a recitation of words at an altar, or even the point of belief, but a surrendering of heart, of will, of mind, of dreams.. and I wasn't willing to go that far. After all, I was raised in a world that told me it was laughable to do so beyond in concept... I'd heard that God loved me as a father does, and I suppose I acknowledged that, in ideal. Christianity as it stands now is great in ideal. Many evangelicals are quite hollow and idealistic. They are great people, great moralists, and very well-intentioned. But they are wrong. They're not bad, they're just wrong. For life cannot be found in ritual, nor in church attendance, in beliefs and doctrines, recitations, and occasionally in revival. Life, I have found, is found when you lose it. When you come to the breaking point that you realize that nothing else is going to work and you're going to have to risk giving it up and letting this God you know in concept, have say in your life. But the things it costs you are things He either already knows you need, things you never needed to begin with, or just shadow paintings of a realities beyond what you can conceive. One day I saw my best friend watching her little girl, and I knew the deep, incomprehensible love she had for her. For once I took the risk of believing that if God loved me as a Father does, as the Bible says He does, then He must love me deeply, unconditionally (contrary to religion) and very, very unshakably. If He was the truth, if He was good, if He was just, then every letter of the His word must be as solid as He is; every promise fulfilled and every command followable, somehow... either I believed completely or not at all. If I took the risk of believing EVERYTHING, then even those things I didn't understand, somehow had to fit. If He promised to provide, He would, and if He commanded something, there must be some way to follow. I started to look at Jesus commands and I saw that what He did was take what was simple law, and went further back, to the principal, straight to the heart behind it, to say that there is no way we can be good enough to save ourselves from all the things we do wrong, or from who we are. He especially seemed to dog religion and all that said man could save himself through words, deeds, or holow ritual. I realized that He did that to prove we couldn't do it, and that that was the reason He came. He came because from one murderous thought in our head we deserve death, and He paid that penalty so that both justice would be done and mercy would be lived out. He said, "I am the only way" and if I believed one word of the Bible I had to risk believing that. I also had to risk believing that He is real, and that if He is real, that He is waiting, and that His commands are for now, are literal and active. So I took that risk, I had nothing else to lose. I found joy, I found the meaning behind life. I found that all those words that people recite and sing in useless ritual actually have ancient truth behind them; the people that wrote them truly experienced them and we can, too. I've found that now, the words I used to sing emptily, have incredible substance...I'm actually telling what is true for me. I have the ability to not worry, to not fear, to not be miserable...and I have a joy I couldn't express to you in a million words or web pages. It took believing it was true, not in concept but in actuality. You can believe Bill Clinton exists but it does not mean you personally know Bill Clinton. Claiming to know God is like wearing a lapel pin on the business suit of reality. But any god useful only as a lapel pin is no god at all. Risk getting to know Him. It takes a step of blind belief. But it works. It works. My gosh, I'm here to tell you it works!!!! :-)
|