When we wake up everyday we see it as a new day, a fresh start, a clean break into the unknown. Never really do we view it as a continuation of what we had going the day before. However, it is often when we are late into the day or night or even early morning when we tend to find the essence of ourselves. We connect with ourselves and reason enough to piece the random parts of our lives together, only to wake up in the morning with our issues entangled once again. Like putting headphones in your pocket and going for a long walk. You reach into your pocket later where you left those neatly folded earbuds and they seemed to have attacked each other. What if we wrote one paragraph each night? Just one that is thoughtful and coherent enough that we can pick up where we left off the night before, might we gain more knowledge each day and advance ourselves spiritually to new heights we used to think unattainable? Only one way to find out I guesses. Maybe thats my goal for this blog, I don't really know, what are these supposed to look like?
But in regards to the time issue in
general. I was speaking with my mother just an hour or so ago about time and
how it may pertain to our maker. We are eternal beings. We will live forever,
either in heaven or hell. That seems to be the promise, there is no purgatory
or waiting line to find out which side we made it out on. Our god sees the long
term. If god did answer our worried prayers about making daily changes our
lives would be an absolute mess. Lets say god has us here on earth for 80
years. As we grow old our minds begin to get stubborn very often and forgetful
so lets so mentally he has us for 70. Fair? Good. So within those 70 years we
may have benchmarks as far as events go. Birth, marriage, deaths,
births, all that jazz. But the more important and eternal ones are those of
spiritual being. Now I don’t mean spiritual in the sense of dogma and religion.
But spiritual in the sense of that you have a soul. Trust me you do. What makes
us different from apes or worms or trees? We are the images that god crafted as
beings. Anyhow, these spiritual events I, as a 19 year old, would say I have
had 4 of.
1)
Accepting Jesus Christ as my savior and
direction for my life at Adventure Mountain, Forest Home camp.
2)
The gradual realization that God and the ways of
this world socially conduct wise and mentally are not quite aligned.
3)
Work crew experience where I really felt close
to heaven and upon return… was shocked to see that the world was the world…
4)
Going to college, uprooting myself from my
surroundings and really having the essence of who I was be refined and challenged. PLNU.
I
would say those are mine so far. 4 within 20 years. So if you really care to
inaccurately average it, one every five years. We often pray to God, reveal
yourself you me, change me radically. But if God did so as often as we asked,
it would be a whirlwind of change that we would not be able to keep up with. As
I look at my past events I see that the time between changes gets smaller and
smaller, which may mean that to be aware of who god really is allows me to
grasp what he is trying to convey to me (stanking exciting), but also to the
fact that as we focus on God, he does reveal himself more and more. However,
those are significant four and two year chunks in between numbers 2-3 and 3-4.
That time of daily wrestling and thundering on are very essential. But within
those years I would ask monthly for new outlooks. It is like god giving is a
hunk of clay and we try to shape it into something one month. This time of
failure is refining and it builds endurance of faith to keep us on track. It
builds an appetite for learning more about God. The next month we tear down
what we thought it was intended to be and rebuild something new. Or perhaps it
is more like chiseling away at something. Not until we mess up so many times
can we finally see the center, the heart of what was there all along. We try to
make conclusions often about what god is doing for us so that we can feel
fulfilled in the daily things. But to seek affirmation in the daily things… I
don’t know. God works on his time. His ways are greater than our ways. So when
we try to find that affirmation, are we really trusting that God has us in his
arms for the long run. Or is it little depth checks that make sure we are ok that hinder us from seeing new parts about God and diving into his mystery. If you need one more metaphor maybe it is like we make the hot air balloon come down so we can make sure that the ground is
still there and then we can only get so high each day before we have to come
back down again. But what if we let go of personal need? Perhaps we could go
higher with God but not letting him take the wheel, but more so by throwing the
steering wheel out of the window and letting the WILD god take over. He is wild
and his way has twists and turns we will never understand. Notice I didn’t say we
may never understand, we WILL never understand.
Goodnight, maybe see you tomorrow, maybe not. Good night. Are
you stating that it merely is a good night? Are you complimenting that night on
being good? Are you wishing me a good night? Or are you broadly just throwing
out the term goodnight because of weariness. Probably the latter. ( from Lord of The Rings). Goodnight.
