the concept of arriving is seductive in its simplicity.
I remember her as a child we took a yearly trip to Florida. This trip always took place in February which was the slowest time of year for my dad's business. My dad always joyed leaving first thing in the morning, to him this meant approximately 3:45 a.m.as we would pile into the backseat of our car along with a cooler full of snacks and drinks we would begin our journey. Sometime around 7:30 a.m. would stop for breakfast and I would begin to inquire as to how our arrival. Usually this particular question would be phrased "how much longer till we get there?"to which my father usually had a very precise answer depending on where we were and he knew exactly how many more hours we would be on the road, to a boy of eight or nine years old it all sounded like a thousand more hours. :-)
What we would arrive at our destination which was usually a beachside motel my dad would go nap in the room while my sister, my mom and I would go to the beach we would all rendezvous later for dinner.
We had arrived it sounded like we would be there, we wouldn't leave this place and yet we all know that wasn't true. Vacations don't last for long, at lease ours didn't and it wasn't like we could spend all of our time in the motel room. There are places to go to eat, to shop, even on the beach there were things to do, observe, and enjoy.
Then vacation would end, and we would enjoy another 23 1/2 hour trip back to New England.
we would arrive at our home unload the car reclaim our bed and settle back into our "normal" life.
Arriving at home still meant we moved around a lot. There were things to do every day, places to go people to see. Staying at one spot even in our house wasn't something anybody did for very long,Unless you were sick,or severely injured.
I would imagine this makes sense to a lot of people. In our everyday world we know that we never really sit still for very long. And even if we are sitting still we are probably also keeping track of several websites, listening to music, keeping track of twitter comments and in essence we keep moving.
In our spiritual life sometimes some people want to arrive....... and stay still.
It sounds so good the concept is seductive. The idea that we can get to a point spiritually where our questions have been answered, we are comfortable, and we don't have to go anywhere. This sense of spiritually arriving only make sense if you are, very sick, or spiritually injured.
Every spiritual principle I know of found in the Bible carries with it the concept of a journey. And although spiritually we may find points in our journey where we hang out for a while we don't actually sit still even while we are there. We can't involved in a variety of things that enhance our spiritual journey and develop relationships with activities, people, and events that help us move forward in a spiritual way. we may even have what we call a spiritual home but unless this spiritual home is also a convalescent home we should be moving toward greater spiritual life.
One of the underlying concepts behind the word "Elevate"is the idea that we are seeking to keep moving in our spiritual journeys. There is an idea that were not striving to go up, then by standing still we will begin to descend.
If you think you have "arrived" and you have begun to die.
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I think this is particularly true of listening to God. It's like the manna that the Israelites ate in the desert. They had to collect and eat it each day. If they tried to store it it would go bad by the next day (except for the Sabbath...hey, if you're doing miracles, might as well go all the way). If we think we've heard from God and we don't keep going back to connect, our concept of what we heard starts to go bad...getting distorted and mixed up with our own thoughts and fears.
ReplyDeleteJesus is the bread of life. You can't just eat bread once and be done with it. You've got to keep eating bread each day to stay alive.
Of course, you found a modern day way of expressing it. Very nice.
I like the idea of bread/manna being connected to our walk with God. I read recently someone, somewhere who said that if we are only eating once a week we begin to resent what we're being fed because what we have been doing on for the last seven days is now old and stale. It made a lot of sense to me especially in the youth culture that I work at. So many kids are not interacting with the Word of God on a regular basis and therefore find what it has to say to be irrelevant, or stale in their everyday life. It also makes sense as to why the word God seems so much more influential when you're at a retreat or youth camp because you're being fed so often fresh food that tastes good and you want more.
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