Stepping In

Disclaimer: this post is not meant to be read while eating. Consider yourself warned.

The more I try to follow Jesus, the more I realize that he is always speaking to us, whether we are listening or not.  He can use any means, any situation, and nothing is too plain or ordinary for him.  He doesn't have to part the heavens; he'll do whatever it takes to get to us.

I know that because this week he spoke to me through a piece of poop.

No, not like an audible voice or anything.  I'll explain.  First of all, though, just a brief sidebar: I will be using the G-rated or PG-rated terms for fecal matter throughout this post (poop and crap, respectively), but I wish it to be known that I find neither of them as satisfying as the PG-13/R-rated term for which they are both euphemisms (although there's no denying that poop is an intrinsically funny word).  I think it has to do with the idea of onomatopoeia-- when you step in some of said substance, it doesn't sound anything like "poop" or "crap"... but it does sound an awful lot like "Sh....."   (at least I think so).  Also, the occasional use of real swear words instead of their socially acceptable equivalents can be more helpful (and probably no more or less offensive to God, who sees our hearts) in relieving real frustration such as what I'm about to describe, I've found.  But, I really don't want to get into the moral discussion of the proper uses (if any) of profanity.  Although, having said all that, it probably can't be helped at this point. ANYway...

To restate my earlier premise, God used some crap to get my attention.  I was moving a bunch of stuff into my new apartment, and I had to park my car on the street (I guess 3rd-floor tenants don't get driveway spots).  So, I was carrying a big box of random stuff through the treelawn.  As you may know, when carrying a big box it is pretty hard to see the ground near your feet.

So yeah, I stepped all up in that stuff (a prime example of a situation where using the real word would be more satisfying).  Not one of those glancing blows where you just wipe it off real quick, but one of those where you look down and the whole pile is smashed flat and a large portion is still adhering to and squishing around the side of your shoe.  Very frustrating, and not at all what you want to be tracking into your new apartment, especially when to get there you have to walk up a common staircase past two other people's doors whom you'd like to have a cordial relationship with.

Something had to be done, so I left my shoes at the door, took the box up to my place in my socks, and got some paper towels. Unfortunately, I was wearing basketball shoes.  As a former shoe salesman, I know that the benefits of this shoe style include superior impact absorption (for jumping), great ankle support, and good traction.  Well, the traction part turns into a big disadvantage if you step in some crap, because all those little rubber zigzags make for some pretty impossible crevices to clean with paper towels.  So there I was, sitting on my new doorstep, very intently scraping poop out of the treads of my shoe with a tiny stick.

And then God said, "What if you were this diligent about getting rid of the crap that's in your heart?"

At least, that's the best wording I can put to the conviction I felt in my spirit.  How often am I content to just leave my sin sticking to me and track it all around my own life and the lives of those around me?  It's not big... just like poop isn't real big.  It isn't the size that's the problem... it's the content, the dirt, and... the smell.

We're supposed to be the fragrance of Christ in the world, both to believers and those who are still searching, and ultimately as an offering to God himself (see 2 Corinthians 2:14-16).  But if we walk without really caring too much or taking time to address the sin stuck in the treads of our lives, even the little/private/thought-life/insert excuse here stuff, I guarantee our aroma will be a much different one. 

Even if most of the rest of us is clean, it doesn't take much to change a fragrance.  I can pray and worship God and witness all I want, but if I'm self-centered the rest of the time then what do I smell like?  I'll leave you to fill in that blank.  By the way, another sidebar I don't want to get into now: this same principle may well be why the church is often not respected by our culture.  We can do all kinds of good things, but it doesn't take many people like those idiots who protest at funerals and such to change the aroma of all of us...just a thought.

Back to my other idea, though.  The verse that God initially brought to my mind through all of this was a different one from 2 Corinthians-- the part where it talks about their reaction to the correction Paul had brought them in his other letter (7:8-11):

"Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it--I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while--yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance.  For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us.  Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.  See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter."

See, we don't need to dwell painfully on our sin forever, but to bring it to God.  God's conviction brings earnestness, eagerness to clear ourselves, indignation, alarm, longing, concern, and readiness for justice-- all of which are exactly what I felt when I stepped in that crap, by the way.  I was diligent, eager to clean it off, angry, alarmed, concerned, and ready to see justice done to the perpetrator!  (I believe I prayed something to the effect that the owner of that dog would have to watch it get run over, actually.  I'm not saying this was part of the godly sorrow, just that it seemed like justice at the time. It probably isn't.)

The bigger question, though, is why my stepping into sin doesn't have this same effect on me.  Why do I seem so unconcerned about the uncleanness and the aroma?  Why don't I have that same earnestness to be clean? I have one idea-- come back with me to my story for a moment.

The reason I was at the apartment in the first place on this day before moving in was to meet the gas man and let him in so he could turn the gas on.  He was (not surprisingly) late, but it turned out to be good because I had just finished my lengthy cleaning process and gotten all the stuff up into my place.  He arrived just as I was coming down to my car with a couple bags I was going to fill with more stuff to move on a future trip.  "Go on in," I said, "it's open... I just have to drop these in my car real quick."  So I was hurrying back to my car, only thinking about getting back into the house to show him where to go.  You see where this is heading?

Yup.  I stepped in it again.  The exact same place.  It wasn't quite as bad this time, but only because it was already completely flat from the first time.  What I said at this point I will not even paraphrase.  My point is, though, that I felt a lot less desire to clean it off right away, having just gone through that whole process.

I think it gets harder to deal with our sin seriously because we keep coming back to it.  We step in it again, sometimes within hours or minutes of getting clean, and we'd just rather hide it than go through the painstaking process of actually cleaning it out and the additional shame of not being able to avoid the exact same mistake we already made.  The ancient philosopher Heraclitus famously said "You could not step twice into the same river," the idea being that the water flows on and is different when you come back.  But you can step into the same crap as many times as you choose to, or as many times as you forget where it is or don't pay attention.

That's why it's so important to have godly sorrow, the kind that brings earnestness and repentance and leaves no regret.  Each time we come before God with our sin is no different than the first time.  His love for us is the same, no matter how many times we fall, and only He can clean us to the point where we convey the aroma of Christ and give us awareness of how to stay out of the crap next time.

So anyway, I did clean off my shoes again, and it was while doing so that I felt like God told me that second part.  The instrument He used to reveal all this to me was perhaps the most unglamorous one possible, and then just in case I forgot he used that same piece of s**t (couldn't resist any longer) again.  He is always speaking.  Will I listen?  He has much better things for me to step into. :)

Saying no...

I suppose I probably should have seen this coming.

What, you may ask? Well, of course ever since I posted about saying yes to God, I've been much more conscious of all the ways I say no to him.  I'm actually realizing, much to my chagrin, that between outright saying no and just not listening at all, I don't really say yes to God nearly as much as my previous post might have made it seem like.  I mean, I even boiled the whole process of life down to a few simple steps in that post... and then I found out I'm bad at doing them.

I guess this is just my personal disclaimer then.  I didn't ever mean to suggest that I have life under control, but it turns out that's kind of what I was actually thinking after all.  If that sounds prideful... it is.  Nice thing is, if you just get something like that out in the open, then God can do something with it.  What he likes to do is humbling and often painful, but that's really what progress looks like, I think.

So, I was thinking that I should amend my five-step plan to include a part where we confess and ask for repentance for all the ways we say no.  Then I was thinking, not many of us are actually bold enough to say no outright to God (although I have done that, and I don't recommend it).  Mostly we just don't ask/listen/pay attention to him.  For those of us who know that he actually speaks, this is a little bit like a kid plugging his ears and yelling lalalalala to not hear what his parents are saying.  He can try the excuse that he didn't hear, but that doesn't usually get far (note that this is a purely hypothetical kid of course, not based on personal experience at all).

The only difference between us and that kid is we've developed more sophisticated ways of plugging our ears and yelling, so to speak.  Last time I mentioned YouTube and its noise-making, distracting brethren on the web and tv.  Sometimes it can even be healthy things, like working hard, or even personal relationships.  Mostly, however we do it, we say no to God by trying to avoid the silence (physical and spiritual) in which we know he speaks.

What I'm finding is that no matter how well I think I'm doing with this stuff, I'm still much more of a mixed bag of good and bad than I wish I was.  I suspect the same is true for you, if you're honest.  Even in this, though, we have hope:

Our hope is that God pursues us.

Even when we are running away (or toward any other thing, which is the same), he comes after us.  He doesn't mind the whole mixed bag thing so much; it's really his only option for people to work with.  Check out the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19, for example!  Elijah just had pretty much the most amazing mountaintop experience (literally) possible in the chapter before, and in chapter 19 he freaks out and runs away.  He also asks God to kill him rather than making him keep working!  Keep in mind this is the same guy that was eventually found worthy to skip the whole death thing and get carried into heaven on a chariot made of fire as well.  Was he perfect? No. But God pursued him... and he spoke to him in the silence (1 Kings 19:12).  I know the NIV says gentle whisper, but the literal translation is "thin silence."  That phrase inspired a poem for me that reflects my desire to listen and respond to the Lord, and I'll finish with that:

Elijah's Prayer


let me be found
in the thin silence

listening

let my voice
surrender and stay

quietly

for you

let my heart
be wholly at home

to whisper

resting on you
let me be lost

Amen

Mushrooms, but No Shortcuts

I recently took some time off from all my responsibilities and went on a road trip by myself, something I highly recommend doing if you can find the means to do so. (A hint: it's a lot easier if you quit your job.)  It's just good to get out and remember that this is a huge world that God is holding together, and it's also great to catch up with old friends (and relatives)!  More than all that, though, I went looking for some direction and set aside some serious time to seek God for that purpose on the trip.  I didn't keep this a secret, so since I got back a lot of people have been asking what God showed me.

It sure wasn't what I was expecting.

In fact, it wasn't direction in the sense I was asking for at all.  The best way I can actually think of to explain it is just with this story that happened on day 2 of the trip.

I was at my grandparents' house for this early stage of the voyage.  They live on like 120 acres of wonderful land in the middle of not much (central Illinois).  Part of my trip's mission was to take long walks in their woods and talk to God out in his creation.  As I told them that, and almost before the words had finished leaving my mouth, my grandma said "maybe you'll find some mushrooms!"

See, I didn't know this, but my trip directly coincided with the beginning of wild mushroom season in Illinois.  Something else I didn't know was that this is a *big deal* around these parts (perhaps due to the lack of too much else going on).  I mean, I've never seen people get so excited about fungus before!  More on that later.  Anyway, it was clear that on any walk I took in my time there, I was going to be equipped with a "sack" (which is what people in Illinois call plastic bags) for the purpose of retrieving any mushrooms I happened to find.

I wasn't really thinking too much about the mushrooms at first.  I stuffed the sack into the pocket of my jacket and started off down the hill toward the creek behind my grandparents' house with my eyes only occasionally straying downward to check for the ugly, wrinkly morel mushrooms that were supposed to be there for the picking.  They don't really look like anything you'd want to eat, actually.  Anyhow, I walked for a long time, stopping occasionally to rest and pray and bring the things on my heart before God.

I kind of thought, I guess, that there would be a lot of these mushrooms around.  I was looking forward to making my grandma's day since she was clearly pretty excited about my search.  After two and a half hours or so of my walk, though, I still hadn't found a single one of the elusive fungi.  My prayers actually started to shift from my requests for general life direction into requests to be directed toward mushrooms.  I hadn't really felt like I was hearing God answer my other prayers anyway, so I was starting to get a little bit frustrated.

I don't know why he was waiting for this, but almost as soon as I started praying about the mushrooms, God started to speak.  What I felt him say, though, was not what I was expecting or even wanting: "why don't you forget about the mushrooms and just walk with me in my woods?"

So I did.  It's funny: I always ask God for answers when he really likes to give me questions.  And the really amazing thing is that they always end up being the answers too.  Anyway, my walk suddenly got much better.  The sun came smiling through the trees after hours of overcast, and either a great variety of birds started suddenly singing... or I just started to notice them.  I felt God just show me his love.  Finally, I got pretty tired and hungry and sat down to rest beside the creek a little before turning back toward the house.

I turned around, put my hand down to get up... and there it was.  Yup, a mushroom.  A big, ugly wrinkled one.  I picked it and thought I would at least have something to show for my time... but that wasn't it.  I looked around a little more, and I kept finding more and more!  In one little area about the size of my apartment, I found so many that I almost filled the sack.  I was unreasonably happy for someone carrying a bag of fungus.  I started to understand maybe why the locals were so into this... maybe.

After the initial euphoria wore off, though, I realized that the mushrooms were just the next part of what God was trying to tell me.  I was so concerned about my own life and my own stuff, when God just wanted me to spend time with him.  What a crazy shortcut to attempt, getting God's direction without taking time to invest in relationship with him.  But I do that all the time.  The mushrooms were just a symbol of that, and really--he had been leading me towards them the whole time.  The blessing was only revealed in fellowship with him, though.

Now, I don't think it's wrong to ask God for specific direction, just that it wasn't God's plan for my trip.  David asked for very specific guidance, as did many others, and God answered them.  You don't really read about Jesus asking the Father for directions, though.  The model he gave is in John 5:19: "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does."  Jesus just lived life as close to his father as possible, and then he could easily see what the Father was doing and join him in it.  He didn't ask, he just walked in fellowship with his eyes open... and he saw.

That's what I think God wants me to do for the direction I need for my future: draw close to him and keep my eyes open.  It just takes the trust that he really is leading me all the while to things I can't currently see.  Otherwise, the request for direction is just about me, not about him... and he doesn't do shortcuts like that.

By the way, everyone at my grandparents' church was very impressed with my mushroom find... apparently I passed some obscure Midwestern initiation rite without even knowing it!  I wasn't just a city kid anymore, now I was a mushroom hunter and better, a finder.  Only God could come up with something like that.  Oh, and my grandma was so excited as she fried up the mushrooms and made me eat most of them in honor of the find.  I guess mushrooms can be significant after all... and they were delicious :)

A Winter Poem in Spring

I'm looking out a window right now at that beautiful kind of wet snow that sticks to only the tops of tree branches and makes the whole world look like if you bit it, you'd taste ice cream.  Earlier, I took a walk in the beginnings of it, but it was still a pleasant surprise when I looked out later to see that it had covered everything.  I know it's almost April, and even my winter-loving self has to admit that it is now, by all official standards, spring.  I just think it's kind of funny that just because of that arbitrary division of months, some people act like this snow is an affront to the dignity of the world.

That got me thinking, too, about how we don't really get to decide when a lot of different things happen in life.  We can strive and try and even ask God for things, but they happen exactly when he wants them to happen, regardless of our plans or categories.  Just like it snows in April (and sometimes May too) in Cleveland. 

Then, I started thinking about the challenge of staying in the present.  I wrote last time about how the desire to have everything right now gets in our way.  However, that doesn't change the fact that right now is really the only moment we have to work with.  I think our problem comes when we spend now focusing on later or already.  When we do that, we effectively take ourselves out of the present.  What's more, we make it very difficult for people to connect to us because we are somewhere (or somewhen) else.

God is never like that, though.  As we try to become more like him, it's important to remember that he is definitionally the God who IS.  It's his name.  I AM.  Although he is not bound by time and experiences all the moments of it equally, he has dedicated his presence to being with us.  God with us, Immanuel, is really just a synonym for I AM in my mind.  If you look at how Jesus lived when he was here, he embodied this divine characteristic fully.  He was able to devote his full attention to wherever and whenever he was, and whoever he was with.  He knew so well how to be present.

Now, I don't think it's wrong for all you colder-blooded people to wish for warmer weather.  I just made the connection mentally that staying emotionally and spiritually present in our lives can be like trying to appreciate a snowstorm in spring.  If we can look past the potential inconvenience and the fact that the whole thing isn't what we were expecting (or hoping for in many cases), there is great beauty to be seen and enjoyed.  Although the seasons of our lives may not last as long or may last longer than we expect or want, God never fails to give us beauty out of our ashes (see Isaiah 61:3).  Instead of getting stuck on the beauty of the future (or past), why not stay in the present and enjoy what's there?

That's what I'm trying to do.  In fact, I've been trying to do it for awhile now, and this whole winter stream of consciousness reminded me of a poem I wrote a long time ago.  For some reason or other, snow has always been something that gets me thinking about these deeper things, I guess.  I'll end with this:

Comparison


faintly perceptible
falling in silence

uncounted stacking
of discrete moments

gentle brilliance
smiling, smoldering cold

overpowering flash
that marks restive roads

empty blanket plush
insulating clarity in the dark

silken momentum
across great distance

quiet everything covering
shining outer shells

restoring final stream
that gives growth future

indirect ocean
wave of frozen clean

and how could we be anywhere
but home?

Seasons

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven"

--Ecclesiastes 3:1


My recent season, as you may have noticed, has not been the season for blogging.  It would be easy to say that the reason for my lack of writing and posting is just that I have a lot of other things on my plate at the moment, but I don't think that's really the whole truth.  I was getting frustrated the other day about all the things I have to do, but truth be told I have all the time I need.  Really, I haven't been writing because I haven't felt like I had much of anything to say.

I'm coming to realize that the ongoing battle of adulthood is not just about making it through all your responsibilities to clear out some free time for fun or for pursuing the Lord.  It's about keeping your heart alive, right in the midst of all the stuff of your life, so that you have something to hold onto when the responsibilities are finally finished.

I don't know if you've ever felt like this, but for me it's easy to get lost in the practical.  There are specific things (e.g. my job) that I know God has called me to do, so I tend to focus on just accomplishing those things.  What I mean about keeping your heart alive, though, is that no practical thing you focus on is going to be able to hold up your life by itself.  There has to be something transcendent at the foundation.  I think I was missing God himself in the pursuit of all the things I thought he wanted me to do.

That's how you end up feeling like you don't have anything to say.  And in a sense, maybe it should be considered progress that I've finally realized I should just be quiet if I don't have anything to say (see verse 7 of the same chapter).  I know I've often just talked right on through those times, saying very little in many words, which benefits no one.  Just the absence of speaking by itself, though, is not enough.

I want to be silent before the Lord until he gives me something to speak.

Then, I'll have something worth saying.  The trick is, he's still calling me to do those things that I've let get in the way of seeking him out.  I think what he wants is for me to find him in those things, to pursue the love and joy that he has for me in my job, my friendships, my calling, etc.   I know that I can just practically manage those situations and find that I have nothing to speak in them.  Or, I can try to find the holy moments in the midst of the mundane.

I think doing that will also lead to increased desire to pursue God himself in the quiet (as well as the love he brings me through my friends) when I do have time.  It's like the opposite of a vicious cycle... an upward spiral?  I think that's what St. Anselm was getting at when he prayed this prayer that is also my prayer in this season:

"Lord, let me find you in loving you and love you in finding you."

Amen.

Snow and Silence

Hmm... that title sounds like a good name for an Eskimo emo (Eskemo?) band... Can you see the hair across the eyes peeking out from the parkas? No? Ok, anyway...

I find myself a member of a distinct minority (at least here in Cleveland) of people whose favorite season is winter. Maybe it's the fact that it goes on for so long, is generally a uniformly overcast grey, and tends to send snow at just the right rate that you have to brush a quarter inch or so off of your car every time you want to get in it. I can see how it might be a little depressing to some. Whatever the reason, few people here seem to actually like it. For me, I'd much rather be a little cold than a little hot any day, but the main reason I love winter is because of the snow.

Now, I could go on and on about snow, as many have probably heard me do already. I've written poems about it, but I'll save those for another day. The main thing I'm thinking about today is how snow makes everything quieter. There's this muffling it achieves that is completely unique. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about: you walk outside after a fresh snowfall and everything seems quiet, even in the middle of the city. I love stepping outside at about 2am and hearing the beautiful softness. It helps me gather my thoughts, and the stillness seems to have a renewing quality to it.

Maybe the renewal is more in the quiet than the snow, though. It seems like our generation is the generation of noise. We're addicted to it. Just look at all the ways noise comes to us: as if tv wasn't bad enough all on its own, we also have radio for those few times when we don't have iPods (side note: the iPod is becoming one of those few lucky products whose brand name has become synonymous with the entire class of products it represents. Kleenex, Frisbee, Band-aid, etc... quite a marketing accomplishment) or cell phones pumping sound into our heads. Plus, those that can multitask do all this while also managing email, Facebook, or the aptly named Twitter.

Speaking of aptly named, how about this new thing Google (another of those dominant brand names, by the way) just came out with: Buzz. This has come crashing into my attention since it's automatically integrated into Gmail, of which I've become a strong supporter. In fact, this buzz deal will even show my blog posts whenever I update (although hopefully my readers will still visit my actual page... hopefully). We got to talking about it at my men's group though, and what name could sum up the general condition of our generation better than buzz? It's this constant dull hum of noise that we tend to keep around us that Google is desperately trying to become a part of. Thus, Buzz. Personally, I'm thinking seriously about disabling it for my account.

Here's why. It's not just an effort to keep people coming to see my actual blog, I promise. It's more of a symbolic stand. Silence, although run from by many and discouraged by our society, is actually extremely important. Buzz is like the opposite of silence, and the worst thing about it is that after so much noise, even when we do find ourselves accidentally in the quiet (like on a snow-covered street in the middle of the night), our minds are still spinning with all the things that have just been pumped into them. That can be unnerving, being alone with our spinning thoughts before God, so often we escape that by pumping in more noise. It can be quite the vicious cycle.

Anyway, I'm not just making up that stuff about snow and the power of quiet. The Bible has all kinds of things to say on the issue of silence too (although it doesn't specifically mention snow in that context, unfortunately). For example, "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). Pretty straightforward, I think: we know God better when we are still and quiet. Period. In fact, silence is quite simply the appropriate response to his power and overwhelming glory. "Let all the earth be silent before him" (Habakkuk 2:20); "Be silent before the sovereign Lord" (Zephaniah 1:7).

Or how about this one: "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life" (1 Thessalonians 4:11). I haven't heard too much preaching about that verse. By the way, the word that is translated quiet here doesn't just mean peaceful-- it's translated as "silent" elsewhere in the New Testament. I mean, Jesus himself went away to quiet places to pray and escape the crowds. I'm guessing he knew that in the Old Testament, one of the reasons judgment came upon Israel was that "the noise of a carefree crowd was around her" (Ezekiel 23:42). Sounds an awful lot like our society today, doesn't it? Buzzzz....

Now, I don't want to seem like I'm bashing the concept of sound here or anything crazy like that. I mean, I was listening to music while writing the beginning of this post (until I started getting convicted about it) and I love making music before God, which we are also commanded to do (see Psalms 66, 81, 98, etc.); "Blessed are those who know the joyful sound" (Psalm 89:15 NASB). It's just that we have to know when to turn off the noise and meet with God in the silence. And really, how else can we expect to hear his voice? You wouldn't have your headphones blasting while your friend was trying to have a conversation with you, so why do we do that to God? True, sometimes he is gracious enough to shout down the noise of our lives, but I bet we'd hear him a lot more if we would just turn it off.

I'll finish with a streetlight lesson, because I can't resist it. What do streetlights do right before they're about to burn out? They buzz. This analogy obviously can't be pushed too far, but maybe buzz is a warning sign for us too. Too much of it, and we may well be getting unhealthy. As streetlights, we shine our best out of the silence.

Entertainment vs. Glory

As it turns out, my thoughts on video games (see previous entry) were only the tip of a much larger iceberg. The larger category, I'm coming to see, is the idea of entertainment in general. We have so many ways as a society to distract our minds and keep ourselves from having to think meaningful thoughts. It seems like we are endlessly trying to amuse ourselves. We run from silence like the plague and constantly need more and more activities to fill up our "leisure time."

Why?

Before I get there, let me take a step back and talk about my personal journey a bit. Up until last week, for the past year or so I'd been feeling this nameless frustration in my spirit. The best way I can think of to describe it is that my soul, if you could hear it, would sound like a car trying to start but failing. Some real churning was going on, but it seemed that no progress was being made, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why this was happening. It was like a fire was burning inside me, but it was only getting barely enough oxygen to keep burning. Ever felt like that?

Anyway, I tried to pray about it a little, but I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. So, probably because a lot of aspects of my life were still going well, I basically just tried to put it out of my mind. That's where video games come in, because they have been my trademark method of putting things out of my mind for pretty much my whole life. In essence I just closed my ears and eyes and ran to entertainment, which had always been enough to distract me in the past.

This time, though, it wasn't working. I couldn't distract myself with schoolwork, with sports, or with entertainment. The more I tried, the more I was left thinking that my life didn't really make sense. Everything kind of came to a boiling point once I graduated from college this spring. Suddenly I had all this free time and no idea what to fill it with. What I ended up filling it with was pretty much nothing, at least nothing of real value.

Finally, the Lord just blew through all of my crap and spoke to me. I was at a baseball game in Chicago with my parents, and God drew my attention to a few middle-aged guys who were sitting around us. Each of them had downed like six beers (at $6.50 a pop, I might add) and they were sitting there in a semi-incoherent state, alternating between watching the game and watching two fairly inappropriately dressed women sitting near them. God just said, "Is that who you want to be?"

The next day, we got home from Chicago in time for me to go to the Saturday night service at the Cleveland House of Prayer (also known as C-hop. If you've never been there, you really should check it out: http://www.clevelandhop.org/ ). Anyway, the message and worship were all about seeing the beauty and glory of the Lord, how God is surpassingly great, the best thing we could chase after. It was all stuff I thought I had heard before, but this time God really made me hear it and revealed himself to me in a new way. He challenged a lot of how I had been spending my time, and he showed me a much better plan.

See, here's why my life wasn't making any sense: I had been saying that God was awesome and glorious and great, but I was spending my time on so much other stuff. I said the right things, but my life showed that I was looking for glory in the wrong places. That night, though, God showed me a glimpse of His glory. To be honest, it made all the things I had entertained myself with look really pathetic in comparison. I felt like so much of my life had been a total waste. I understood in a much deeper way this thing the apostle Paul said: "Whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him..." (Philippians 3:7-9).

Knowing Jesus was the one thing that held any satisfaction whatsoever for Paul. The rest, he was ready to toss out the window. It's kind of like how Mary sat at Jesus feet and Jesus said that was the "one thing" that was needed. It's a lot like how David said, "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4). In fact, it's exactly like that.

So, back to the question of entertainment and distraction. The question, as you may remember, was "why?" The answer, as far as I can tell from these verses, is that we haven't seen enough of the glory of the Lord. What did David want? To see, to gaze at, the glory of God! As he did that, it became the only thing he had any desire for. As a friend of mine said to me recently, God is God and we're just creatures, so life is obviously about him, not us. So basically, if we still have this insatiable desire for our own entertainment, it just means we haven't seen enough of God's glory yet.

Why entertainment? Because we haven't had a revelation of the glory of God.

The thing is, we can't make it happen. A revelation has to be revealed. God has to show us his glory, and we can't force him to. But, he does promise this: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13). If we make him our "one thing," he promises that we will see his glory in a way that makes everything else pale in comparison.

It's not a one time deal either: God revealed himself to me through the teaching and worship that night at C-hop, but even though it was a turning point for me, that one night won't be enough to keep me going for the rest of my life. I need "to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord," to stare at it, burn it into my eyes, and just overall to keep on looking at it. That's what will make my life make sense and keep me going, not entertainment or any other pursuit except Jesus and knowing him more. And for that to happen, I need God to reveal it to me. I sure didn't find him, because I was looking in the wrong places. He found me. That's why He is the one thing I ask for, that I would meet him where his glory dwells.

Will you ask God to reveal his all-surpassing glory to you? If he does (and he will), you'll never ask for anything else.