This morning everything seems to be magic. Driving to work with my dad, the whole world seemed so silent and small, with every twig on every tree crystalized in the snow and ice like we are living in a world made of glass. It is wonderful to be happy just because you are alive, not because of anything going on in your life. That's what true happiness is, isn't it? It can't have anything to do with your circumstances, because those are constantly changing.
It seems that there are only rare periods in my life when I really trully want to live for God, and this is one of them, but I'm very afraid that if I stop talking and writing and praying about it for a few hours I'll forget about it and go back to living for me. That's how weak my heart is... it's so discouraging. I once heard a pastor say that the older he got, the less detached from the world and focused on heaven he became. That sounds like such a beautiful thing to me, to actually want to go to heaven with everything in you. I still can't see myself really wanting to spend that much time praising God. It sounds exausting. I wish that I had that kind of love for him and that he was that REAL to me.
Do you ever feel like God isn't real? Like even though you pray to him and read about him and talk about him with your friends all the time, the whole concept of the gospel is so big and radical that it's hard to accept that it actually did happen, at a certain point in time in the history of this very world that we live in now? I wish I beleived in Jesus being born by a virgin and dying on the cross and comming to life again the way I beleive that Pompey crossed the Rubicon and Cleopatra was the Queen of Egypt, but there is always this element of mystery that I stumble over. I have a hard time with mystery. I want things to be laid out, black and white. Sometimes after I'm done praying I try to wrap my mind around the fact that I was just talking to the same God who spoke to Abraham and Job and Isaiah, but I never quite can. It's a scary thing, and I'm sure that if I ever was able to understand it I would pray quite differently.
*sigh* It's amazing just how far I always have to go. The one thing I already can't wait for about heaven is never having to deal with sin again. To actually feel even my thoughts and my motives being good and clean and perfect all the time... I doub there is anything more wonderful than that.
I can totally relate. I know what the Bible says is true, it's just very very hard for me to make it equate to the life I live, and the history I read. sometimes it comes to me in a flash, and for a short length of time, everything makes sense, and then it's gone.
ReplyDeleteBut I think I jinxed myself by writing this, because that day didn't turn out so great and I totally lost my perspective on things. I think God just has to keep me humble sometimes.
ReplyDeleteYes. Exactly.
ReplyDeleteYou need to read Heaven, by Randy Alcorn. Really, really, really need to. It will make you want to go to heaven.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point about the creatures not understanding. And faith. I think some of it is just accepting as best we can, even though I'm don't really like the word "accept"... it has too many conotations.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I'm so crazy about God. Like I want to read the Bible and pray and sing and shout in worship all at the same time. I can't get enough of Him. And I like those times way better than when I don't even feel like he exists. I hate it when I feel that way but then I remind myself how emotions change and it's not about emotions. Sometimes I feel really hopeless. Hopeless because I don't feel God. That's when I decide I'm gonna hold onto Him with everything I've got. With faith. And then I remember I'm not just holding on. God's holding on to me.
So even when we don't feel like He's there or He's real - which is way too often - we just have to remember that.
Whoa. where did you spring from MJ? I thought you were lost for good and forever!!!
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