Friday, October 21, 2005
Jealous
"...and at this point in my life it's a place God has me... I know so that I might realize that that ache that hunger for "more" in my life... can only ONLY be filled by HIM." Breezze wrote that in a comment on yesterday's little story, and it echoes the idea I had but didn't really get out there.
Our God is jealous. Not because he feels slighted by our attentiveness to everything but him, and in particular my desire to fill my life with distractions so I don't see the awful truth, but because he knows that his way is best.
I can't tell you the number of times it seems as if a relationship I have is finally taking off into something warm and inviting, and then it ends. Or a simple conversation starts on a day when there have been no phone calls, and then the phone rings off the hook. Time and again, through the years, counter-statistical.
I'm not one to bang my head against walls. If the will of God is to keep me alone, then who am i to argue? All I know for sure is that my ways haven't worked very well: I don't get what I want. So, I want the wrong thing, or am trying to get the right thing the wrong way. Beats me. So, I quit.
I guess that could be called faith, although the path seems pretty easy to walk when it's the only one open. As an old-time bushwhacker in the mountains of Colorado I learned early that bashing crossways through the brush on a shorter path was much slower than going with the flow of terrain, and taking turns toward where I really wanted to be when an opportunity showed up in an opening between trees or rocks.
Water has no will of its own yet always gets its way. Is God giving me hints? How subtle is a slammed door?
What is the alternative? Talking with God. Now, there's a frightening thought. I still harbor all the old judgments. The roots of assumptions deeply dig into my soul and I turn to God with great fear and quaking. Yet he seems to enjoy the conversation, no matter the subject. I don't really understand it, but I am getting used to it. For now.
For now I float alone over the abyss of loneliness that always threatened to consume me. I don't fall into it because of God's hand under me. I don't know how other people handle this kind of thing, or even if what I write is comprehensible to anyone. Perhaps it is my experience that makes the whole set of images comprehensible to me. I can't communicate the fear I've felt of finally losing any connection to the world and drifting off into terminal strangeness. Well, maybe I'm already terminally strange. In our culture anyone who goes across the grain of society, seeking his own path instead of following the well-beaten trails, is seen as weird.
I've always been out of touch, a bottom feeder, so society hardly notices I'm here. Perhaps God is using this characteristic--I wonder where it would line up in a Meyers-Briggs--to keep me to himself so that I can learn his ways. I certainly have a lot of my own to unlearn.
So, what's one more weirdness on top of the others? For some reason, my survival is important to God, and I just have to go along with that. Maybe, some day, I'll enjoy it.
Our God is jealous. Not because he feels slighted by our attentiveness to everything but him, and in particular my desire to fill my life with distractions so I don't see the awful truth, but because he knows that his way is best.
I can't tell you the number of times it seems as if a relationship I have is finally taking off into something warm and inviting, and then it ends. Or a simple conversation starts on a day when there have been no phone calls, and then the phone rings off the hook. Time and again, through the years, counter-statistical.
I'm not one to bang my head against walls. If the will of God is to keep me alone, then who am i to argue? All I know for sure is that my ways haven't worked very well: I don't get what I want. So, I want the wrong thing, or am trying to get the right thing the wrong way. Beats me. So, I quit.
I guess that could be called faith, although the path seems pretty easy to walk when it's the only one open. As an old-time bushwhacker in the mountains of Colorado I learned early that bashing crossways through the brush on a shorter path was much slower than going with the flow of terrain, and taking turns toward where I really wanted to be when an opportunity showed up in an opening between trees or rocks.
Water has no will of its own yet always gets its way. Is God giving me hints? How subtle is a slammed door?
What is the alternative? Talking with God. Now, there's a frightening thought. I still harbor all the old judgments. The roots of assumptions deeply dig into my soul and I turn to God with great fear and quaking. Yet he seems to enjoy the conversation, no matter the subject. I don't really understand it, but I am getting used to it. For now.
For now I float alone over the abyss of loneliness that always threatened to consume me. I don't fall into it because of God's hand under me. I don't know how other people handle this kind of thing, or even if what I write is comprehensible to anyone. Perhaps it is my experience that makes the whole set of images comprehensible to me. I can't communicate the fear I've felt of finally losing any connection to the world and drifting off into terminal strangeness. Well, maybe I'm already terminally strange. In our culture anyone who goes across the grain of society, seeking his own path instead of following the well-beaten trails, is seen as weird.
I've always been out of touch, a bottom feeder, so society hardly notices I'm here. Perhaps God is using this characteristic--I wonder where it would line up in a Meyers-Briggs--to keep me to himself so that I can learn his ways. I certainly have a lot of my own to unlearn.
So, what's one more weirdness on top of the others? For some reason, my survival is important to God, and I just have to go along with that. Maybe, some day, I'll enjoy it.
# posted by Larry @ 09:26 
