It's Been A While...

I haven't blogged in quite a while - mostly because life happens more quickly than I can process sometimes. Over the last few months I've had various ideas floating around my brain, and making sense of them has been an interesting and sometimes difficult task. I find myself asking,

What are we doing?

We seem to be living our lives as if nothing matters. We're hopelessly waiting for something that will never come. We're constantly looking inward, trying to find something in ourselves that can keep us alive.

There is no such thing.

We're messed up. We're human. We are going to fail eventually.

We are paradoxes, and we live and move through paradoxes. We want something to come and save us, and yet we want that something to be controllable. We need something bigger than ourselves, but we're not willing to give up our hold. We're afraid of the dark, and yet we live in it without even trying to get out. We don't like the cold, and yet here we sit, shivering - without any real hope of finding warmth and light and joy.

What is joy?

C.S. Lewis calls it "an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction." Paradox? So it would seem. And yet, what Lewis is saying makes sense. The moments of my life that I categorize as "joyful" are all ones in which I felt a mixture of awe, longing, hope, and desire so intensely that all I wanted to do was to stay in that moment forever - even though it was a moment of "unsatisfied desire." I think that our joy is such a good thing because we know with certainty that someday relatively soon our deepest desire - our desire to truly know God - will be satisfied beyond our wildest imaginings.

We're fallen, wicked creatures; we can't find wholeness within our own selves.

But it is possible to see to know the truth.

There is Someone who can save us. That Someone is not the Self. Self will kill us faster by strangling joy, and he strangles joy by smothering hope.

"Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you... Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." -John 14:27

There are a lot of controversies, a lot of debates, a lot of stereotypes within the Christian community that are pointless and much more harmful than some realize. Let's just be real with each other for once.

Please.