...longing

Today I started reading a “how to apply the Bible to your life book” . What is happening to me? I mean I (sometimes) appreciate the input of older, wiser, Godlier men and women, but whatever happened to the days when I didn’t learn about God in a book (I’m not considering the Word of God a book). I’m sick of vicarious intimacy with Christ. That’s because it’s not real. It doesn’t exist. I can’t and I won’t know my Savior through anyone else’s knowledge or experience. That’s the danger and beauty of love. You must be willing to be consumed. Maybe that’s why I feel like I’m riding the bench. This can’t go on much longer. It’s time to play or get off the team. I long for those days when I could feel God’s presence with every breath I took. Those moments are fleeting, just a glimpse of something beyond this age, but how wonderful they are. How wonderful they were. How wonderful they will be. Yet in this moment right now they seem about as real as a 1960’s epic about a manboy in a loincloth named Perseus. How I long for faith. Real faith that enables me to live in the unseen. Faith that knows that promises made thousands of earth years ago are more wonderfully binding on my destiny than any dates in my planner (not that I actually have one, a planner that is, not dates) and more certain than tomorrow’s sunrise. Faith that unregrettably enraptures me in a life that is lived by, for, in, and because of my relationship with the Divine.

As I look back on my life, I am amazed at all the things God has taught me. I have grown, I cannot deny it. Yet it seems that the more I grow in Christ the farther away I feel. I guess I’m just getting a miniature hint at how low Christ had to reach to rip me out of the pit.

What a horrible thought that I actually attend reunions there from time to time.

by His grace, for His glory
jrf