i often hear people say that when X condition is fulfilled, life will be so much better. in a way, it's waiting for something: happiness, stability, peace, freedom. whatever it is, it's something that we hang our hope and our trust on to fill that need.
after years of waiting
nothing came
as your life flashed before your eyes
you realize
you're looking in the wrong place
i think one of my biggest fears is getting to a point in my life and feeling like it's all been in vain. X, Y, and Z have been fulfilled, but the inside remains the same. like a person who has lived his life in search of something but has in the end failed to find it; a person constantly preparing for something but never quite getting there.
this is the point, then, where i examine what thing or condition i'm putting my hope in. if it's anything earthly, i'm bound to end up like the person above. this is not to say, of course, that i shouldn't want a good life - one would be insane to say that he doesn't mind instability or lack of peace or freedom or whatever. every normal human being wants those things. the question then merely becomes, from where do you seek it?
C.S. Lewis, paraphrasing Matt 6:33, says "aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. aim at earth and you get neither." a true Christian is both hopelessly pessimistic and hopefully optimistic. pessimistic in seeing that nothing on earth will ever satisfy (see, e.g., Ecclessiastes). optimistic in knowing that God will never leave his people in need (see generally, the Bible).
my personal goal, then, is never to focus on one or the other, but to see the picture as a whole.
2 comments:
You got lazy on that last reference "see generally..."
haha. you could say that. but really, i was trying to emphasize the point that it's a theme so common in the Bible, it wouldn't do it justice to quote one or two examples.
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