Brownsville, Lakeland, Azuza Street, Youth Camp, Promise Keepers, Crusades, why are these so popular? Yes, they are incredible, beautiful movements of God but is this all God has to offer for our lives? While we are there we feel God, we experience his presence in a corporate setting and leave so pumped up, ready to change the world for God. It has been my experience that 2 weeks or so after I leave these settings I'm sunk into a deep depression. The zeal for God that burned so strong is replaced with complacency. God is no longer my first thought, God has been swallowed by the real world and I become depressed. Every time that I leave these meeting I say this time will be different, this time was truly life-changing. But it never was.
It's all too often that the church,(Christians) jump from one spiritual high to the other. the lull in between is filled with searching for the next event. I'm not sure if this was what God intended for us. Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 10:31,"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." We are called to do all things for Christ. Whether in home or shop, eating, writing, exercising, having sex, sleeping, playing video games, etc. It's in these times that we are showing our commitment to God, in the boring, the mundane, the everyday. God created us as eternal beings to share his love and his life with us. We as Christians have committed with our mouth to God but our actions and attitudes do not always fall into line with this claim. I'm writing this to myself first which is good because more than likely, I'll be the only person that reads this. God wants to be in every part of our lives, not just these big events or at church. Why?
Because he loves us. Simply put, God loves us all. Christian, people that don't believe in God, Muslims, Hindu people, everyone. and he loves us all equally. Think about how beautiful that thought is. Constantly we reject him, (I'm referring to Christians here) we reject him in our actions by putting him on the back burner, on the shelf until we need him. Try and visualize this. Boy meets Girl, Boy loves girl, Girl does not reciprocate. Boy never stops trying, professing his undying love for Girl, Bringing her flowers, puppies, cooking her dinner and supplying her with everything she could ever need....all for her love. Girl finally comes around and says," Okay I love you. I commit the rest of my life to you. But nothing really changes, she goes out to dinner with him once a week and on holidays, but in between those times she is dating other men. He knows this but his love is so deep that all these hurts seem to go unnoticed. He continues to love her just the way she is.
You see what I'm going for here, but how does this connect with the rest of this post? because we are called to do everything for God. Things that seem trivial or mundane are suddenly acts of worship, beautiful songs sung by the bus driver, the doctors, the baristtas and all of creation.
I'll leave you with a beautiful quote from Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
"Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware..."
I'm sick of blackberries
Thanks to Matt Huett for inspiring this. and by inspiring I mean letting me rip his thoughts off and pass them as my own
#!*@
15 years ago
