Smell the Roses...

In past blogs I've touched on our tendency to avoid life through busyness ("Limited Perspective" 12-2-06, "Our Journey" 10-25-06) but it remains an issue for so many today. We all have an inborn need for meaning in our lives, a desire to know "why" we are, and too often we don't have answers to adequately satisfy those questions. Nor do we know where to look for answers. We all have a hole in our heart, an emptiness we fear that we cannot subdue, so we learn the art of distraction. If we can remain focused on other things we don't have to focus on ourselves. We don't have to address the condition of our heart for we've effectively blocked it with our minds and actions. Stay busy and we don't have to worry about the "why", for we use all our energies running away from ourselves...

Unfortunately, we are human, and our bodies can only go for so long at top speed. Sooner or later we run out of gas, we're forced to slow down, to recooperate, and we find the same gaping hole in our life still there. We are faced with ourselves, and we don't have answers... We become anxious, afraid. We stress, for we don't know what it is we're geared for. So what is this human condition that drives us to fill ourselves up in so many different ways? Some are workaholics, putting in 80 to 100 hours a week, dragging themselves home exhausted just to repeat the cycle the next day. Some are alcoholics, or drug users, choosing to lose themselves in the temporary artificial escape of self-induced dementia. Others party, wrapping themselves up in other people, often people as lost and seeking as themselves, banding together in pseudo comfort, thinking they're finding satisfaction in life. It's all a mirage... Some get caught up in social agendas, trying to fill the hole with "good" deeds, but in the end it's unsatisfying... Everyone who tries to fill the void on their own fails. Everyone. It's a universal truth.

So what is the void? It is the seperation from community with God, caused by Adam's sin, and passed down to each and every person born on this earth since. We were made for community, and only restoration of community fills that void. And it doesn't just fill it, it overflows it, and we experience life, not merely existence. Jesus said that anyone who drinks of the water of life that he provides will never thirst again; further, from his heart (where our hole is) will well a spring of living water welling up to eternal life (John 4:14). Have you ever tried to contain a spring? It just keeps welling up, bubbling to overflowing, reaching out and touching all that's around it. That's how Jesus fills us. We're filled up from the inside, so we naturally flow to our world around us. The hole is gone, filled with something that makes us whole to overflowing... We can then learn about peace, and contentment, about loving others because we now know we can love ourselves, for we are loved, with a greater love than can be shared by any man, and our heart's natural desire is to reciprocate with love. We can learn that the stress and anxiety of our world is fleeting, is temporal, and we are not subject to it's power anymore... All of a sudden life, the journey, is good, and we can slow down and enjoy it, and learn to smell the roses...