Thursday, February 09, 2006
Unique
If you want to read an honest Blog, take a look at Life Unplugged. Lu asks questions that are implied every day of a Christian's life, but most people don't want to rock the tradition-bound boat by asking them.
Why is life worth living as a follower of Jesus? His touch burns, His way is rough, steep and bare-faced honest. God isn't political. You can't talk your way into a cushier seat on the train. There is no train. Just walk, like everyone else, on a path difficult enough that I look at it and want to quit.
Options? Not many. Go back to living as I used to. Not attractive... but why? What has changed? I don't get out of bed in the morning looking forward to another day of walking with Jesus. I dread what might happen. The future is out of control. My control, anyway, and I have this ingrained habit of trusting only myself. Why is it worth the pain of letting God undo that confidence? I must be nuts.
Either that... Or I was nuts before, and am now becoming sane. Maybe sanity, at some very deep level, feels better than the insanity that comes from bending and reshaping to fit the world as Satan has oh so subtlely reformed to fit his ideas.
Maybe I see a thread, a tiny thing, leading from where I am to some brighter future. Maybe I accept that burning hand's touch because the fire is a true fire that helps me see reality. If there's one thing I've cared about beyond being left alone, it's reality. Reality is what doesn't crumble when my back is turned. God, in his attitude toward me, has never wavered. Always there, always fiercely kind, not letting me lie to myself. Maybe in some very odd way this feels good and it's that feeling that I pursue. Not God as a talisman against an unfeeling world, or God as magic pill to boost my emotions, but God as a real Father. He cares, and rather than letting a casual slap on the shoulder stand in for love he gets in there with his sleeves rolled up and says "I will never leave you nor forsake you. Let's do this together."
The idea of "together" is unusual enough that it gets my attention. Asking for help, even from the church, is like a third-world country inviting the U.S. to provide aid. You ask for seeds, you get the Army and computers.
Some people appear to take to this life of following Jesus easily. I would bet, though, that behind the single-point visible act that gets people's attention is a long submarine spell. Prep work. It took Jesus 30 years.
