Posts tagged: Hope
“But it is funny, because after Pat’s sermon I realized how often I prayed for God to change things with (this), or make it stop upsetting me and hurt so much. He did neither, but He sustained me. And now, a week after the realization, He made circumstances worse, made them hurt a whole lot more, but His love is still there holding me. It actually puts a sharper focus on how powerful His mercy is in endurance. I’m continually reminded of something Piper said in regards to the story of Lazarus in John: It is more loving for God to reveal Christ for who He is and how valuable He is that it is for God to keep us from pain and suffering; even death. And I know that, and am continually grateful for God’s grace and mercy in sustaining me.”
Things will always suck. Something will always be going wrong in one way or another. And occasionally things will get really bad, really bleak, really dark. And things will hurt. And things will make me sad. But God is always a sound foundation. And He has to be.
Imagine you are sprawled out on the ground, feeling like death. And you need to try and stand back up. Weak knees, weak will. And you begin to rise, just a bit. If that foundation under your feet sways even a little, you will end right back on your face. And you tremble and try to stand more, and stabilize. And again, you need that foundation to be solid. Because it takes a long time to stand tall again, but eventually you do have to stand up.
And the worse things get the more clearly we see Christ. The brighter that light shines. Now anyone who knows me knows that I hate suffering, and that right now sucks. But at the same time, there is a bright beacon of hope in things. And it would be stupid and counter-productive to ignore it. Suffering produces hope (with some steps in the middle). And God’s love is more pronounced in our appreciation of Christ even more than it is in His keeping us from suffering.
You know the most foundational question in life? It is simple: why are we here? Why do we exist. There is not a man alive who does not ask himself this question at some point. And in all honesty, it is a damn good question.
People need a reason to live. Aimlessness is never good. Some people have people they love to keep them going. Some people have jobs. Others have school. People have families they want to raise right. Paul was satisfied to stay alive for the sake of the church and his ministry. All these things can glorify God. And that is the purpose, that is the aim, that is the only reason for life: to glorify God.
So why do I feel like there is really no purpose for me? I have a job and that isn’t it. I have friends and people I love, but in all honesty there is only one or two people I care about enough to sacrifice anything significant for….people I’d say sticking around for would be enough to not lament the fact I can’t depart to be with Christ, which is far better. Part of me thinks if I had a different job…maybe if I was a writer. Part of me thinks if I went overseas for ministry that’d do it. But I remember my days in Turkey and my constant desire to leave wherever and whoever so I do not grow attached. Part of me is convinced that all I need to do is find a woman to love who loves me back. Because I know the abstract is to glorify God. But the specifics just aren’t there for me. I feel like the whole word is indifferent to my existence. And again, I know it really doesn’t matter because it ain’t about me, but at the same time, if I were to be gone and not a whole lot would be different (nothing significant anyways) then that is something concerning. I keep plowing through trying to have faith.
But then I have nights where I am praying and the thought creeps into the back of my head. What if God isn’t real? Paul says that if our hope in Christ is only in this life then we are to be pitied above all men. How true is that? I have dedicated my life, and trusted everything, to a God I cannot truly see or know. I have put my fate solely in the hands of faith. And that is terrifying when doubts wander in. What if I’m wrong? What if my life has absolutely no meaning because what I have sought, what I have wanted, was nothing? What if it is all an illusion?
I do believe God exists. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be here. But at the same time, there comes a time when you have to think of why you even get out of bed in the morning. I think normal people don’t even have to consciously think of this. They just do it because their jobs, their classes, their families, and the things they enjoy are out there. Some people can’t wait to get up in the morning. And then there are the others. Whether we are common or outliers I am not sure. But that question becomes paramount at some point in life. Right now I get out of bed because I don’t want anyone condemning me. Sometimes I want to check Facebook to see if anyone has thought of me and expressed that thought via the internet. Lately it is because I need to work because I have rent due and student loans (which, more than anything, has served to crush my hopes and dreams). Most days I know I wont see the people I want to see, so I resent everyone else who shows up for not being the one I wanted. I waste my days wasting away. I wander through the working hours playing a role that is not myself. I try my damnedest to be charming so that people I do not know, do not really care about, and may never see again will love me, because I think that is more important than the fact I don’t really want to look into the mirror most days. It feels like the only reason I am alive most days is the fact that I have not died yet. That really isn’t any way to live.
I want to glorify God with my life, in my life. But my medium seems to be lacking. Or perhaps I have just grown stagnant. Perhaps I am still resentful of the fact God has done things, withheld things, that I think are unfair. Perhaps this is just my self-destructive streak rearing its ugly head once again. Maybe it is just that it is Christmas time and there is nothing more depressing in my life than December.
Piper (via Edwards, who got this from the Bible) says God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. But right now, to quote the prophet Mick Jagger, I can’t get no satisfaction. I keep quoting lines from Romeo and Juliet in my mind. Romeo being petulant and the Friar rebuking him, counting his blessings and asking “There, art thou happy?” Juliet, in desperation, crying out, “Be not so long to speak! I long to die!” Men without reason become desperate. There is a line from a movie that says that men wandering, dying of thirst in the desert will drink the sand because they are just so desperate to drink something. Another character responds that people don’t drink the sand because they are thirsty, but because they don’t know the difference. I am afraid of coming to a place where I can’t tell the difference between sand and water. I am scared of the fact that I can’t find a legitimate reason to want to wake up most days.
Even all the things I talked about that part of me is convinced would help are ultimately not the cure. Their lack is not the problem. But they are something. And that’d be nice right about now.
I have said before, whether here or in conversation, that if it weren’t for God I would be dead by now. The truth off that statement is that if it weren’t for God I probably would have succumbed to depression or a certain disdain for life by now. But as I was watching this storm a bit ago, I was struck by how powerful nature is, how big it all is, and how insignificant I really am. And a thought came to me, crystal clear, as though it had been hanging at the back of my mind waiting for me to see it. I am fully convinced if there were no God, there is absolutely nothing that would stop me from killing myself. And the reason is simple. If there is no God then the only logical reasoning for living is somehow focused on me. Either I need to be happy, or I need to improve the world for others (we get the hedonistic or altruistic sides of human-focused living). And both of these become utterly foolish when considering that I will never be the best at anything. I will never be good enough. Nothing changes. And in the end I am so incredibly insignificant in the grand scheme of time and space that my very existence would be relegated to a waste of time. Life apart from God is completely meaningless and worthless.
The only way existing even makes sense is if the only true meaningful reality lies somewhere completely divorced from myself. This is God’s creation. Not just the Earth, but literally everything in existence. As the Spirit testified: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.” We then are but meager instruments the Lord uses to glorify Himself. We know from Ephesians that God works all things according to the council of His will, and does so to the praise of His glorious grace. Isaiah likewise tells that the love God has for us is for His name’s sake, that He refuses to let His glory be given to another. If I existed for any other purpose than to bring God glory, then I would be a failure of epic proportions with no reason to continue on.
But God has created this world according to the council of His will. And as such we can have confidence that this is the best of all possible worlds for God to be glorified. Therefore, I can have confidence that, messed up as I am, as flawed and insignificant as I know my life to be, I am the best of all possible Torys for God’s purposes. This is not to say I have free reign to do nothing. We are called to grow and in that bring even more glory to God.
But the thing is that God is initiating (He created), God is moving, not only in and through people, but Christ, as His exact imprint of His nature, actively upholds all things by the word of His power! I am like a pawn on His chess board. But at the same time not at all. For I am His beloved. He chose and adopted me apart from anything I had done, would do, or could do.
I have no significance of my own. I have no good, no righteousness, no hope of my own to speak of. I have nothing at all. All that is counted as mine is so because of Christ. Because God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God. We are nothing. Without God, not one single second would matter.
That is why I am so ashamed to have become so tired of life. So indifferent towards it. So eager to leave it. I am alive only because of Christ. I am alive only because God exists. Until He is done with me, I know I have some purpose, and I know that while I will never be objectively significant, and I will never be the best at anything, I am significant in the role He has assigned me for His glory, and I am the perfect, best of all possible people for that role.
It is one of the saddest facts of my existence. Human contact. This unquenchable desire for contact, for love, for anything passing as interaction on more than anonymous levels. It is, in the end, so sad that for all that desire, for all the realization of that truth, that need, that I am paralyzed by fear. It is, to say the least, pathetic, while at the same time it seems so natural. And more and more I feel that this sickness, this desire, is what leads me to act in almost every good and evil way.
It is this that drives the pit of my stomach to feel ill with some hope or longing every time my phone rings or alerts me of a text.
It is here that my desire to check my e-mail and Facebook every hour originates.
It is here that I equate these forms of contact with honest affection, the lack of them making me feel unloved.
It is for this reason I avoid human contact, few hugs, pensive to even place a guiding hand.
It is draining.
And in this age where contact is becoming so divorced from the actual body, where I can hear from someone through various mediums other than actual interaction, I fear that these truths are pushing this deeper. We desire interaction, contact, affection. But we get texts, emoticons, and, if we are lucky, a disembodied voice left in answer to our own. And as these “interactions” become more frequent they replace the normal humanity we crave. This, I fear, is slowly draining and strangling the soul.
We live in an age of falsity. With the click of a button we can find anything we want, from the mundane and normal, to some exotic fantasy that could not exist in realms of reality. We allow ourselves to be separated even more. We embrace it. It is as though we get a paper cut and decide the only rational thing to do is jab a knife in the wound, then a bigger one, and eventually it would be abnormal not to bleed.
We are bleeding away our humanity.
Or maybe it is just me, sitting in the glow of some computer screen commiserating with the keyboard thoughts I probably would not be able, or more likely willing, to articulate to more than perhaps one or two human beings. Having just checked Facebook and G-mail and been saddened to find nothing new. Maybe I am the only one who finds this capable of crushing the soul if we let it. Or maybe I just have not accepted this new way of doing things and am naive enough to remember, fondly even, the days when things were more complicated but real.
I know there is a middle ground. Embracing technology or what it is and using it as a supplement, not a replacement. And perhaps this is all just an exposure of my weakness, cowardice, and overall pathetic nature. Whatever it is, there is a cure out there.
Maybe all I need is a hug.
When things are bothering me, my thoughts tend to stay with them for a while. This is normal. Sometimes, these thoughts become more clear as they come to me in lines of poetry or songs. I thought of this last night: “I live and die upon your lips, your every breath and utterance.” I put so much stock, so much weight, in people and their opinions. And not so much what the opinion is, but rather just that they took time to formulate one about me. To know I matter. And that is what I was thinking as this came to me.
And another thought quickly followed: “Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” This thought inevitably came from one of the more annoying sectors of my brain that likes to recite scripture to me when I am trying my best to be self-pitying.
But it hit me that it is no wonder I have felt dead so much recently. I have been starving myself from God’s word. I mean, it’s there and I see it and use it, but I don’t feed on it. I don’t feast on it.
“For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed we felt we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such deadly peril and He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope that He will deliver us again.” -2 Corinthians 1:8-10
How many times do I quote that verse? How amazing is it that it applies to my life pretty much every moment?
