Saturday, December 09, 2006

stars on a sidewalk


This life of faith is hard.

Its not just about learning. I wish it was. We humans are good at learning things. And certainly learning is a part of it. Our continuous hunger for learning more about God is essential to our lives of faith...or maybe its a product of our lives of faith, I don't know. But either way it is there. Learning.

But...its not just about learning. It can't be. For how can we learn things which are completely other, completely foreign to us.

For example: unity.

What do we know of unity? We live in a world in which more marriages end in divorce than end in 'happily ever after'. We live in a world in which we drive an average of 40mins, alone, to and from work everyday (a statistic that is true in Knoxville); a world in which we come home from work, open our garage door, drive in, close the garage door and never see our neighbors; a world that says "make sure you watch out for #1"..."have it your way"..."that might work for you, but this works for me".

We are like flat, two-dimensional people trying to explore a 3-D world. We hear a word like 'jump'. And we dissect it. We study it. We talk about it. We think we've got a grasp on it. But the truth is, we don't. Some of us might be closer to understanding what it means to jump, but none of us are any good at it. We've never really done it. Though our limbs were made to jump, our joints are stiff because we've lived in the comfort...and the confines...of a lesser world. And when awakened to this new dimension, there are things that are simply out of our league.

So what do we do? Do we not strive for unity? Do we not seek it? Do we simply give up? Give in?

Absolutely not! This new world has a third dimension. We'd be fools to keep living like stars on a sidewalk when a universe is offered. We were made to hang in the heavens and reflect the glory of God to God and to the world, and now we know that. How could we ever go back to being okay with a life of being walked on?

So then what do we do?

We keep trying to jump. We come to grips with the fact that we don't know how and we stop pretending that we do. We humble ourselves. But we keep trying. By the Spirit of God, we keep trying. We bend. We stretch. We start working muscles we didn't even know we had. And we try...knowing that God, in His unimaginable grace, is watching.

And to Him we look like Olympic high-jumpers. Because He knows this life of faith is hard. And...because, in truth, what really matters to Him is not so much our jump, but our journey.

3 comments:

The Anonymous Human said...

ummm...I don't really have anything to say. I just thought this blog deserved a comment.

Good blog.

bill said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
bill said...

thank you for your compliment...and your pity.