I don't think you'd know, by looking, how I worn I feel. I coach with smiles. I grasp at the Word. I April fool. I run. I cook. I play with kids in the parking lot. I let them sit at my table at Starbucks. I deliver food for a family that grew and spin a three year old round and round. I strum the guitar and sing softly.
And yet, it's only Wednesday.
It's only Wednesday and I've been aching for Friday for weeks, it seems.
Elizabeth feels ill and I can't sleep - not at 9:30 or 12:15 or 3 or 4:30 or 5 or when the cats come in at 6:23 wondering where breakfast is. I feed them. I browse my too smart for its own good phone and read this depraved world and realize I can't be the only one who's done.
I pack. An apple. Journal. Pen. Words of Life. Computer phone gets left behind. I throw together a steaming mug of chai and walk.
I walk and I think about Henry David Thoreau, who says he went to the woods to live deliberately, to suck all the marrow from life. I think of Ms. Zinos' sophomore English class and how bold and profound that sounded to me then. Oh, the things I didn't know at 15.
As I walk to to the lake, I think on it some more. And now, Thoreau sounds weak and cowardly and selfish. Because I just read the opening of Exodus and I think Thoreau and Moses had a lot in common. Thoreau saw his broken world and ran from it. He retreated into himself. Moses saw his broken world and begged God not to make him be the one to fix it. God said, "I AM" and would be with Moses and Moses kept finding reasons to shrink away.
But how do you live deliberately by yourself? How do you breathe life when all you do is suck it away?
I went out o the lake because I was tired, and I need Jesus. I didn't come because I thought I knew better or had another plan (remember when Moses killed that guy and tried to hide it...). I went out to the metaphorical woods because I. Had. Nothing. I don't have strategies. I don't have solutions. But I have Jesus. I have the Words of Life. I have life in my bones -
And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord...And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open you graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken and I will do it, declares the Lord. Ezekiel 37:6, 13-14.
And I have to wonder if Thoreau just barely missed IT. If he was looking for the deliberate life when he could have had the abundant one -
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. John 10:10
But maybe, just maybe, it isn't even about the abundant life. Maybe there are two other words that we miss and if we didn't miss them, maybe we'd have it all. Two words that change everything.
I. Came.
Jesus, Son of God, Son of Man, came.
God. Came.
This is what Moses knew and looked for and why, instead of retreating, he kept moving forward. He let God do everything because he knew he had nothing and Jesus - Messiah - was the everything he looked needed.
And I have come down to deliver them...Exodus 3:8
He [Moses] considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. Hebrews 11:26
Thoreau and Moses and Me. We look at our lives and our selves and our broken words. And we know there has to be a better way.
Thoreau tries to find it in himself.
Moses looks forward to it, as something, someone, hoped for but not yet seen.
And me, I have seen it. Messiah has come. He has given me life. His work will be completed.
My friends, if you are just done, look up. Look to Jesus. Let Him be what makes the difference.
He came. He is coming. And He gives more grace.
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