LAMENTABLE is the fact of a well-privileged
person’s lament over how sad their lives feel to them. Laughable is the state
of a person who’s not satisfied with an incredible amount of material
‘blessing’ — laughable if it wasn’t so lamentable. But the more we have the
less we tend to appreciate it. And material blessing is no shortcut to
spiritual affluence.
The more I’ve been dissatisfied
with my life the more I’ve come to realise how the things of God have been
pushed aside by gods that are things. But the more God comes in, squeezing out a
whole world of gods, the more satisfied I’ve become with nothing; the type of
satisfaction that can come only when we fast and make our days devoid of any
stimulation whatsoever. Haven’t we grown to love and rely upon stimulation? — The
god of interesting things to do.
We have a basic choice in life; to
go to our gods and fall or to go with God and fly.
Here’s five signs that we’re
falling with gods or flying with God:
1.
The gods must be crazy, and they make us crazy,
too. The simple fact
here is gods make us crazy in quick time, probably because they themselves are
crazy. At no time is it good to be led by the blind (the blind leading the
blind). There is an itch we cannot scratch in the addiction that quickly forms
in us and makes our lives more and more unmanageable the longer it gets
entrenched. A tolerance for a toxic relationship proves the god of tolerating
untrustworthy people sends us crazy. When we act in a way that defies our own
reason, we stand there incredulous with ourselves. But with God we would never
feel like that. Deep in our relationship with God is an imperviousness to
personal incredulity — any incredulity with ourselves forces us back into the
heart of God. This means that God guides us in a wisdom that protects and
provides for our self-perception. With God we tend to learn to run from
craziness toward a wisdom that helps.
2.
God makes us think of the end. Whether it’s the end of our life or the end of
an activity, starting with the end in mind is just plain wisdom. When we’re
motivated by and operate within the vision we have for what’s coming, or for
what could be coming, we’re appropriately cautioned by the truth. We tend
always to respond in the right way when we know we’ll be held to account. God
makes us think of the end, and this is good for us. It makes us fly in our
faith.
3.
The gods compete with one another. Too much is too much for us. Too many ‘good’
things tends to reverse the effect of what should be contentment. Too many
‘good’ things breeds frustration, because we cannot control them all — or even
one when there are so many distractions of stimulation and interest. We always
like to control those things we ought to have control over. But over God we
know we have no control. So surrender makes sense. Surrender brings peace. When
we have too many things to hold, things get dropped, or we lose balance and
fall over.
4.
God helps us to grow. Life means nothing if we’re not challenged to
grow. It doesn’t mean we have to endure pain, though it’s a classic irony that
God makes good of our suffering when we suffer patiently. Growth is flight through
the echelons into the upper stratospheres of human living.
5.
The gods make us insanely dependent, and we
come to have no independence. The gods take us nowhere good. Indeed, we know it. As we come
to depend on things more than having no dependencies we learn, again, having
learned again and again (and again), that the only way to be free of
dependencies on things is to be dependent on God alone. Only through faith in
the Lord are we afforded many cathartic independences.
It’s good to keep life simple. One
God is good, but many gods are tortuous. One God makes us content, but
happiness never resides in many.
Trust our lives to the things of
God, or the gods of things?
© 2015 Steve Wickham.
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