I already know that I can't explain what I have and am experiencing. As Schaeffer said, I've touched the creation. I'm experiencing the mannishness of man. Oh I can describe my thoughts and surroundings, the things I see and do, but there is something, some true experience that my soul has tasted and that I cannot explain. Though rare I have known it before. I well understand why existentialist who sought such an experience had to be encouraged not to commit suicide after having this “final experience”. I am lying in my hammock suspended between two pine trees near the top of Shadow Mountain at 6866'. The drive up is along a dirt road with perhaps the best and most dramatic views of the Tetons. With a beautiful pink and orange sky with wisps of clouds and Adam Duritz's soul searching voice singing the lyrics to my favorite songs, even in the midst of it I knew with pen and paper or digital 0's and 1's I couldn't explain what my spirit felt. I feel so alive I almost despair of life. The desire to share it and experience it with someone, to know that someone else is as alive as I am is the Trojan horse of such an experience. It's in these moments, the moments when I feel most alive, that I know I am most alone.
These touches with creation invariable lead to the knowledge of the Creator. Perhaps such a moment is what led Descartes to say, “I think, therefore I am.” though, “I, therefore God is.” seems a more appropriate conclusion. And though not enough to show man's remedy, it certainly leaves man without excuse. This may be what heaven is like when we no longer live by faith but by sight, and everything is so much more real. Even if offering prayers and thanksgiving or singing praises is difficult now, when we stand before him in our resurrected bodies, when our resurrected eyes literally see him, when his majesty and glory are so manifest that it is all we can see, then praise and thanksgiving will pour out so naturally that we won't be able not to praise and glorify him. How dreary this life most have looked to Paul, who perhaps more than any other man, experienced this when he was called up to the third heaven. Even from my limited experiences, it is only the command, “Thou shalt not murder.” that keeps me here. No wonder Paul could say, “I desire to depart.”
God, please give me more of yourself. Above riches, fame, glory, beauty, power, children or a wife, give me Christ, the bread of life and spring of living water, to feast upon. All my other desires are mere preferences. This is my one true desire. Give me yourself or take me from this world of distractions and into your presence forevermore. Amen.
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There have been and will always be times when I'm thoroughly disgusted with this world. The only thing I see is a broken down version of what God created as perfect, in both people and the earth. I want nothing more than to go to heaven. There seems to be nothing left for me here. And I get frustrated with being seperated from God, in the sense that I cannot yet see God, or physically hear His voice. Then there are moments when I'm so distracted by life, I forget the anguish of being here. There's only the anguish of being seperated from God by the things of this world. I had/have trouble reconciling the two. A friend told me that the unseen and the seen are one. And I didn't understand. But to look at the world with eyes wide open, at creation, at friends and family, looking into the spiritual nature of everything, the truth that the heaven I long for, as much as I can handle it in this body, is here... well, it's something I thank God every day for revealing to me. Letting me see every day, the day He has made and let me live in and know. I can't imagine leaving this world right now (though I still have my moments of anguish and wanting to leave this earth) for the very reason Paul couldn't depart. There's still growing, and being a vessel of God for others. I'm by no means saying I'm beyond the longing for heaven. But just as you pray for, that I long to see, hear, and have more God here, in my life. I guess, in a way, I'm saying I understand.
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