what wrecks you...

What can't you stand? What makes your blood boil or your heart melt? What makes your eyes tear or your stomach knot? What breaks through every detour sign and roadblock you've constructed around your life and collides with the "bridge under construction" that is your heart? What keeps you up through the watches of the night pestering you with questions that refuse simple answers? What is your strongest desire, the kind the arrests all your energy and tires you when it is finished toying with your soul? What leaves you in pieces picking up what's left of your little world view? What collides with your core inviting you to engage without promising a safe return? What images are burned into your memory that awaken a fear and a fuel all at the same time? What is your calling? When will it matter to you that you don't know? Why is the last question something that our soul will not let us get away with not answering?

I'm finding something out...what wrecks me, I mean really cuts me to the quick, that's usually the very thing that wrecks God's heart. So many are asking themselves what to do with their lives when they need look no further than the pit in their stomach. This pit leads to purpose. When you feel an abiding ache for a certain facet of life, it's not an accidental preoccupation, it's more than likely a fire in your bones to equip you to engage with the impossible.

The impossible odds are every before us. They are taunting us like Philistines across the valley. They are daring us to take a shot at acting on our ache. They are intimidating us with statistics of futility and history books filled with others who have tried and failed. They are reminding us of how foolish it is to dream that things could be any different than they are. They are encouraging us to take our place in the line of people waiting for the rapture and praying for prince charming to come and rescue us from this present hour. They are laughing hysterically at the absurdity of a single person challenging the notion that "it is what it is". And we shrink back and resume our humble existence. Live and let live.

But just suppose people believed this one maxim, "Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good." - Paul the Apostle. Dream about the simplicity of this proposal. Every act of good pushes back the bad. When we act on what wrecks us, we may not be able to get an interview with Larry King, but we affect change on a planet in need of an expansion of goodness. Every word laced with goodness, every thought purified with goodness, every act motivated by goodness...this is what pushes back the darkness.

Maybe, just maybe, those stirrings of the spirit are prompted by One who felt them first and invites us to take our place in the symphony of souls playing the music of goodness in a world overcome with evil. "Open up the doors and let the music play, let the streets resound with singing. Songs that bring your hope and songs that bring your joy, dancers who dance upon injustice." -Martin Smith. A song written by a man that must have felt something of what pounds in my own breast on this, my day off.

There are no days off for the one who serves a being Who never slumbers or sleeps.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Well J, I agree. That is the question that tears at all of us. Do we choose to ignore it, or do we invite His answer to the "pit in our stomachs". And when he answers, are we willing to act on it? I guess time will tell...

Popular Posts