A Daring Reach

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
-John 20:27

In moments of duress we respond with either “fight or flight.”  How many times have we heard that adage?  It’s become so commonplace, we often take for granted that it is simply true.  We have only these two choices whenever we’re anxious, right?  We either fight or flee.  A centipede will do that.  As will a barn swallow.  And so will a cow.  Maybe that’s the point, that in our evolutionary-minded culture we just assume that we came from the same amoebic slime and have these responses as hold-overs to our ape-ish great-(to the n-th degree)-grandparents.  An article found on msn.com’s homepage today echoes this assumed reality: “The famous fight or flight response mechanism—yep, the same one that helped our ancestors outrun saber-toothed tigers…”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I guess, I’ve always felt like these were pretty limited options and somehow pretty animalistic.  Maybe as a weary, worn-out people, this is what we often do.  Much of what I see in my counseling office is people anxiously combating or fearfully avoiding relationship or situations — and that seems to fit the bill.  What other options can there be?

Recently I was challenged to consider a baby’s response to his environment.  Raised in a healthy environment, whenever hungry and needing his mother’s breast, the baby reaches.  Whenever frightened and wanting comfort, he again reaches for his mother.  Whenever exposed to new things or people and uncertain about them, he reaches for security from mom.  There is no fight or flight in him.  Not yet.  It is all reach.

It is only as that baby grows and experiences the fallen world, repeatedly exposed to fearful and painful events where he reaches and finds no one, that he learns to defend or hide.  As an adult, then, he has learned to “live out all the other selves,” as Frederich Buechner put it, “which [he is] constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.”  The original innocence is all but lost.  Accessibility, vulnerability, authenticity, strength — gone, or buried.  Buechener continues, “The original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all.”

From my experience, when Buechener says, “most of us,” he is speaking literally.  It is extremely rare to encounter anyone able to live out some deep and true and good heart.  It is the stuff of fairytales and legends.  When we see it, we are stirred and even captivated.  We want to be like that, or be reached by someone who is like that.  Think of heroes in Hollywood blockbusters.  Or maybe the occasional firefighter running up the stairs of the collapsing Twin Towers to rescue bleeding and burning victims.  The reason we write books and make movies depicting such a character is not because we see it around us (or within us), but exactly because we often don’t.  Our souls are buried by demands, imprisoned by pain, blinded by fear.  Broken and lost to us.

The loss of this treasured “original, shimmering self” is one of the greatest tragedies of the Fall.  A tragedy so great, in fact, that it was for rescue and restoration of it that God launched the greatest invasion the world has even known.  It is for want of this back that Jesus came “to seek and save what was lost” Luke 19:10.  His mission in his own words is to, “bind up the brokenhearted… to comfort… to proclaim freedom for the prisoners… recover sight for the blind… release the oppressed…” (see Isaiah 61:1 and Luke 4:18).

One of the ways Jesus does this is by reaching.  When Jesus “reached out his hand and touched” the leper (Matthew 8:3) and “reached out his hand and caught” Peter (Matthew 14:31), he was both saving them (from death) and modeling for them the courageous act of reaching.  He reached the man at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-15) and the woman at the well (John 4:1-26) in a similar way (just more indirect, though no less subtle).  The gospels are filled with stories of Jesus reaching out to us, of God stooping to face us and call us friends and bringing us up to His level.  My own life is filled with stories of the same.  So intent is He, in fact, to reach for and save the “original, shimmering self” that He obstinatly refuses to false self, the coats and hats we wear — which can often cause confusion over Jesus intent and motive. (Consider how confusing it must have been for the Pharisees that Jesus chastized and offended.  In his offensive way with them, Jesus was still reaching for the buried self, even in refusing to address the pretense.  Whenever one of them responded to Jesus with authenticity, Jesus would address him in kind [see, for example, John 3:1-21]).

Not only does Jesus reach toward us (and how far He comes to do that!), but His invitation is for us to reach back.  Even when we are living out of the cynicism and despair and unbelief we’ve learned in this world.  This was His approach to Thomas, who refused even to acknowledge Him at all.  Jesus simply offered, “Reach out your hand and put it to my side.  Stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27).

I am constantly amazed at the courage of my clients that, after all the pain of living they have experienced, after all the encounters of reaching out and finding no one, that they are still reaching for something, demonstrated by the very act of coming to see me.  Something in them balks at and refuses to completely embrace in existential despair that they are totally alone in the universe.  Maybe it’s not the original expectations that someone would be there to offer the comfort and protection they needed, but the very act of stepping into my office and opening their hearts and lives to me is in itself a courageous reaching.

The reach response of an infant who hasn’t yet learned to fight in desperation or flee in fear, and the subtle and trepidatious reach found in some of us still hoping for someone or something on the other end, is an image of God in us.  Maybe the most glorious part of that image in us, that part of “eternity set in the heart of man,” as Ecclesiastes puts it.  In a way that is brutal and even demanding, Jesus still invites us to reach toward Him, out of the deepest love for us and desire that in the reaching, “we may have life, and have it to the full,” that in the seeking, we may both find and be found.

Return of the King’s

Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
-Matthew 8:21-22 

Being in grad school can be pretty demanding, as can any number of things we engage in with our lives — marriage and kids, ministry, jobs, a crisis here or there, sickness, and a million other things.  The demands of life simply take their toll.

I’ve had some unexpected openings with my time recently.  I’m still in school, but my schedule has shifted a bit and freed me up a little bit through the day, creating some breathing room I haven’t had in quite awhile.  Not much, but enough that I’ve had time to slow down a bit.  There’s that, and there’s the space I’m beginning to make for my heart again, time to reconnect with the deeper places in me, and time to reconnect with God.

The trouble is, I’m so used to the whirlwind of busyness that when I try to slow down or when I have some down time, I can’t seem to sit still.  When I try to quiet my mind and heart, to try to listen to the voice of the Lord speaking to me, all I too often seem to get is the rising anxiety about what I should be doing, or the worry about tomorrow’s activities, or the unsettled restlessness of things in my life.  Me, me, me.  Though I’m involved in a lot of beautiful things that are bigger than me, when I slow down the vertigo-of-soul seems to indicate that in too many ways I’ve become the center of my own story.  I’ve become stuck in an orbit around myself.

I decided today that the only recourse I have is… well, is to realize I have no recourse.  I have no internal resources that can save me from this vortex of ontological lightness, as theologians call it.  If I am to follow Jesus again deeply, it must begin with Him coming into and speaking into this tornadic mess inside my heart.  Otherwise, I’m unsure where to go with my attention and energy.  My  mind only comes up with a few different places I could go — mostly either dead-end roads of boredom, distraction, or worry, as I’ve mentioned, or worse — dark corners and alleys that have crept into my heart as I’ve shied away from the Light of Life.

So, with no internal resources to rely on, I’m dropping it all and running to Jesus.  And this is what I pray:

Please meet me here, Lord God.  Spirit of the Living, God, I remember that You want to commune with me even more — far more — than I want to with You.  I don’t want distraction.  I don’t want the distance of worry and inattention.  I don’t want comfort.  And I must not wait to bury my father, to wait until all is fixed and well before taking off again with You into the deep.  I don’t want th eless wild offers of this world or of the Father of Lies.  I want You.  Jesus, I want you.  Everything else is dung compared with that — for you are the Pearl of Great Price.  I hunger for You.  My soul thirsts for the Living God.

Where may He be found?  Who can ascend His hill?  Praise be to my God, who has given us clean hands and pure hearts, that we might walk with the Living God, learn of His ways, be trained as master horseman with his steeds, be loved as a bride on the bed.  We are Yours, O Lover, we are Yours, for you have first loved us.  Jesus, you are our King and Suitor.  And I am your man.

On Methods and Mystery

Recently I was counseling a young lady who by external standards had everything in life figured out.  On her way to getting her Master’s degree, she has been sought out by a prestigious company offering her a nice bonus for signing on with them.  She was dating a star athlete at her college.  And she had enough cash and friends to keep her evenings and weekends full and exciting.  She had everything in place.  The world was her playground.  Life was hers for the taking.

Except that she didn’t feel very much alive.  In fact, she discovered that all of the focus on these externals kept her spinning and dizzy with busy activity, but left her weary and full of anxiety whenever it stopped for just a brief moment.  It was like a marry-go-round for her.  As long as it was spinning fast, she had a blast.  But the bell had rung, recess was over.  She looked up to see a lot of the people she really cared about going on toward better things.  And her?  She only felt abandoned and seasick.

As you can guess by the neglected state of her internal life, her relationship with God was practically nill.  In fact, she wasn’t even sure that he was real.  After all, she’d never really felt him.  It was easier, she decided, to hope that God didn’t exist than to deal with a God who existed and yet she didn’t feel Him near her.  That would mean either He’s not interested or she’s doing something wrong.  Either scenario would be more painful to deal with than if He didn’t exist at all.  Agnosticism was a safer choice than facing the pain of the alternative.

Several silent minutes went by while she processed some of this reality and slowly gave herself over to this truth.  With her head in her hands, stated simply, “I’ve always lived my life like it were a formula.  Everything was a problem that could be solved with the right steps and procedures.  The right method.  The right answer.  But this totally breaks down with God, doesn’t it?”

And so the unknown beckons.  It is a safe life that demands to be formulaic.  It is only the bold and adventerous ones that have had to, at some point and with some things, throw caution to the wind.

We prayed together, and she invited Jesus to move and speak into places in her that had been left cold and desolate by the demands she’d placed on herself.  Her heart, you see, could not follow suit with her life lived only in the mind.  Somewhere along the way, she had bound it up and dragged it along behind her, kicking and screaming.  Now it’s snagged, and refuses to go along any longer.  It must be addressed.

To enter into the kind of life worthy of our living means that we will enter into the deep mystery of the human delimma.  There is simply no way around it.  The questions of our existence will surface, and so will the question of God’s involvement — or seeming lack of it — in our lives.  Where is He?  Where was He?  Where is He now?  There are no formulas for these questions.  No quick answers.  The only thing we have to go on is the hope that He’ll meet us in the asking, and give us His heart for the taking as we slowly open ours to Him along the way.

There was a subtle change in this lady’s life on this day.  Not dramatic, perhaps, nothing anyone else could identify.  But some quiet notion that life is to be had, and it is not easily won.  How much does she want it?

And that is where we must begin.  How much do any of us really want it?

An Enemy Among Us

I realize lately that when I write, I am consistently harping on the reality of busyness and its role in our lives.  This blog is as much journal as anything, a locale I come to occasionally to offer what’s on my heart and mind, and this topic is apparently a consistently weighty one for me.

In a sociology class I teach, I asked the students to comment on a portion of Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy I had given them.  It was an intro, a prologue, to the book, and there was very little in this portion that was what I would call particularly spiritual or religious, except that Willard was addressing our contemporary confusion over morality and meaning.  He termed it flying upside down, that in our present age we cannot tell what is up and what is down, and we are headed in a dangerous direction and don’t even know it.  Among several realities he referenced was the plague of busyness, the way we dash back and forth and in and out like rats in a cage, trying to find — or else thinking we have found — some sense of trascendent meaning and existential purpose.

In reading the responses of the students, I realized that I am not alone in seeing the problem with our living “in the matrix,” to borrow from the movie’s idea of a small, cramped, and unreal arena in which we act out our lives.  The comments from the students’ papers were consistent in labeling this as a problem they have come to recognize as well.  I was blown away at their perception.  The understanding of this thought of “flying upside down” is well-known, I suspect, something that we each recognize on some level.

I think it was Richard Foster that said busyness wasn’t a device of the Enemy; it is the Enemy.  Maybe so.  Maybe the Evil One masquerading as an angel of light.

Think about our culture for a second.  What is the typical response of someone you meet up with when you ask them how they are?  There are those few exceptions, but generally the reply goes along the lines of, “Oh, so busy” or, “Lots of things going on” or, “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve got on my plate” or something of the like.  Even in church circles — or, in my experience, especially in church circles.

Why is that?  What’s the story there?

Sometimes it may be a sincere gesture to try to catch you up on good things happening in life, especially for someone you haven’t seen in awhile.  Sometimes.  But not typically.  More often, it is a substitution for meaning, something nearly lost to us in our society.  But we desperately need meaning. This is not an option for us.  So we create it ourselves, replace it from something else we are familiar with.

And we are certainly familiar with busyness.

The other night I was listening to a Podcast of some theological discussion (honestly, I can’t remember what the discussion was really about), and was struck by some off-handed comment that the Bible is primarily about God, not about man, and that, in fact, man was only a minor blip on the screen of God’s live and story.  That is certainly not a common view of reality by Christians I know and read about.  We have become the center of everything going on.

I’m not good with that description either, by the way, the thought that we are minor players on the stage.  I happen to believe that God has given us a very prominent role in His cosmic script, but I do agree that we are not the central object around which the universe revolves.  I think most of us would agree that the Lord God is, of course, our gravitational center and around whom all things move.  Picture the planets encircling the sun.  ”In Him we live,” I think is how Paul put it, “and move.”  Even here, the sense is not so much that we live around Him, but within Him somehow, as if we are not so much planets around a sun, but rather the corona itself, prominences, solar flares.

But somehow we end up zipping off from our Center and shooting out into an endless and cold void, trying our hardest to find something larger than ourselves to clutch to so as to give us at least a small taste of our rightful place with God, so that we can feel even a subtle feeling of being held in place.  And these objects and events and ideologies we busily define ourselves by, they are so tempting exactly because they can make us feel connected and purposeful.  They do draw upon our need for transcendence.  Otherwise, they would not be so alluring.

Have you noticed how it can be anything?  We’ll take our hearts to the smallest and most insignificant moment or memory or habit or object or idea and begin building our lives around it.  A fragment or debris from some far-roaming object.  And before long, that’s all we can cling to.  How could we ever find our way back again, and so we cling desperately and tenaciously to what we must know is not great enough for us, not worthy of our devotion and worship.

School.  A person, even a romatic relationship.  A band.  Going to concerts or shows.  Sophistication.  Money.  A social cause.  An identity as a “good person.”  Reading.  Video games.  TV shows or movies.  Church attendance.  That new car we’ve got our eyes on.  The economic “crisis.”  Reputation.  

The list is literally endless.  I’ll give us this — we are pretty creative when it comes to our busyness.  Our godless worship.  Our idolatry. 

And let’s face it.  We are, all of us, guilty of this.  We’ve got to come there first if we are ever to break free from them and find our way back home again.  Step one is to recognize we are far away.  

Step two?  Own the fact that we are made for more, that we are made to encircle and have our being in God, and that only that will satisfy our longings that threaten to destroy us.

And the third step?  Only this: crying out to the only One who can save us from these things we cling to and that cling to us.  

I know this because I am here.  It seems sometimes like a daily experience for me to wake up, recognize that even through the night I have wondered from my place in Him, embrace my desire and longing for Life – which is to say, check my compass and recall that I am headed somewhere, and that this isn’t it.  And then cry out for God to rescue me.  This is why the Psalms are full of that very thing — cries for rescue and deliverance from their enemies.  To be restored and refreshed in this Life that is Him, to be reconnected to the true Vine of that Life.

My friends, the enemy of our day — not the only one, perhaps, but certainly one of the greatest and most effective tactics the Evil One uses — is “busyness” as a replacement for true meaning.  It’s a stow-away, a double-agent, an angel of darkness masquerading as one of us.  We’re made for more.  So much more.  Let’s find what that is.  Let’s remember what that is.  Let’s  be done with things that we know in our hearts will never be good enough.  And let’s ask our Creator and Lover to bring us back into the source of that Life.

Restless for Rest

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything, though I had intention to continue some thoughts on the Christmas theme I began some time ago.  I actually had a lot of ideas of what this Christmas season would bring, what I wanted to do.  (Hiking and writing were among the top, as was spending lots and lots of time with people I love.)  Some ideas came to fruition; others did not.  What I did not anticipate was the amount of rest I needed and the amount of rest that, by the grace of God, I found.

My life over the past six months or so has been a confusing mix of both exciting new vistas into a ministry I’ve desired to enter into for many years and the weathering effects of hour upon weary hour spent in preparation for it.

So I slept.  A lot.  For the last two weeks, that’s mostly what I’ve done.  I slept in.  I took naps.  And when I was up, I tried not to plan anything or even wander too far from the house, in case I wanted to lay down again.  I wasn’t depressed — nothing like that at all.  Just… worn out.  Exhausted.

It’s easy to forget the effects that tiredness has upon a life.  It’s not just a weariness of body, but one of soul, and it shows itself in my interactions with others that turn more superficial as I don’t have energy for the deeper reality, in my distance from God and even my own inner life (that part that is “hidden with Christ” — desires, hopes, fears, dreams, etc.), and in the sloppy way I end up completing things before me.  My intention is good, but eventually, something has to give, as I simply lack the energy to follow through.

We’re horrible at this in our culture.  Whatever the reasons — a sense of identity, distraction from existential meaninglessness, a misunderstood idea of purpose — the people I know tend to pile things on and stuff their calendars full of all kinds of things.  Busyness is the name of the game.  How often do you hear “Oh, I am so busy” in response to the question “How have you been?”  It’s usually said with a sense of pride and accomplishment, a mark of achievement, a sign that they’ve really gotten somewhere.  Jesus always seemed to move in the opposite direction than that in the gospels, always toward freedom and spontaneity and intimate time alone with his Father both for its own sake and so that he could enter deeply into the heart of the people he came across.  His time was always spent meaningfully, not busily.

And I’m always amazed at the difference rest makes, and how vital it is to my life.  I can see that again, this side of the last couple of weeks.  I awoke this morning early, severely early if you compare it to the mornings I’ve been able to sleep in, and felt re-energized and ready for the day ahead, even for the week ahead.  I was drawn to open the Scriptures to Hebrews, where I read about this needed rest we are to take (Hebrews 4).  Now I know when you read that chapter and the one before it, you get the sense that the author there is referring to “rest” as a kind of state of being that is opposite to the unbelief that the Israelities demonstrated in the wilderness with Moses.  It’s a kind of resting in Christ.  But isn’t that what I’m referring to anyway?  A state in which I am at rest and able to continually be at rest even as I’m fully awake and moving about in the world?

Besides that, entering into relational intimacy with God through Christ (what the author of Hebrews is in part referring to when using the word “rest”) does go hand in hand with resting from work, since this is what God did after his work of creation.  “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:9-10).  This is hinted to in the idea of restoration, a renewal of all things back into what they were intended to be.  Rest is a very holy thing.

For now, rested, and resting, I’m ready to get back into the swing of things, to enter again into the arena, knowing that soon I’ll need to take time away and regain my strength and sense of identity in God once more.  Resting is part of the cadence and rhythm of the life we’re meant to live.  The spiritual life is a lot like our physical health.  You can never get so healthy that you never need to eat again.

I just hope I can remember that before I get to the point of exhaustion this time.

How Far Will He Go?

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?  If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
-King David to the Lord God

How far will the Lord go to have us?

The King James translation of the Scripture quoted above uses the word “hell” for “depths,” an accurate translation of the Hebrew word שאול (Sheol).  Sheol means “grave” or “pit” or “the abode of the dead.”  What David is saying here is really scandalous… that no matter where he turns, God is going to be there with him, that no matter where he takes his heart, his God will go with him to that place, only to be with him, only to have him.  (Proof of this is the hell of the Cross that Jesus went through.)

If I really make my bed in the depths of hell, really — meaning, if I really should run as far and as fast in the opposite direction of God and life and freedom and chain myself to soul-whores and lay my heart out on the alter of my idols that steal my life and breath and if I seal my mouth with a death-mask to suffocate myself — will He really still be there, “His right hand to hold me fast?”

The reason this is so obscene is that it shatters our comfy-cozy pictures of God, our flimsy perceptions that melt when the heat gets turned up in our lives.  The God that David sings to here — and no doubt David surely knows what it is to be in the deep, lonely dark of hell on earth — this is a bold-ass God, one with a heart that is merciful, resistless, fierce, and fiercely determined to have our hearts, no matter what we do with them or where we take them.

Imagine the implications of this.  Wherever we are, right now, God is holding fast to us.  God is a blink away, a turn of the head, a imperceptible whisper, a collapse, a stumble, a glance.  Certainly hell is not where God wants us to make our beds, but David knew a God who would reach that far to be with him, to be near him, to bring him back home to His heart.

The direction of our entire lives can change with the subtlest and weakest nod in the direction of life, the faintest heart-cry for rescue.  He knocks at our heart’s door — oh, does He knock!  And throw rocks to our windows and cry out for us to let Him in! — and we only have to muster the strength to turn the knob… and in He rushes, catches us, anchors us, and invites us to a table fellowship, a friendship, to be His companion through it all.

This is astounding.  It is a moonshine-grace so pure as to blind anyone who would dare sip it, and all the while give us eyes to really see the lovesick heart of this pursuing God who will have us, no matter what.

Nothing is beyond Him, including you and me right here, right now.  His life wins us back from death.  This is salvation, being saved by His life (Romans 5:10).

Toward the Deep

The fishermen know the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangerous sufficient reason to remain ashore.
-Vincent van Gogh

It is a part of my make-up that I am compelled toward the deeper places, to delve into the inner-world of things.  I was that way even as a kid.  While my brother was riding his skateboard and learning how to do grinds and kickflips, I was trying to figure out how the trusses worked.  I’d get spares and old broken ones and look them over.  I loved to take old telephones and radios completely apart and lay out all the pieces in front of me and marvel that in that condition, they were not much to look at — interesting but worthless pieces of plastic and metal, springs and screws and magnetic parts — but together they did some amazing things.  I say “old” electronic equipment, but it wouldn’t always be.  I would, in fact, take everything apart I could get my hands on, often at quite an expense for my parents when I couldn’t get them back together again.  My dad would work on engines in the garage, and I would love to imagine how the numerous pieces of metal parts scattered on the rags and towels in the floor would somehow fit together to make something happen.

One of my favorite play-things growing up (aside from my Micromachines collection) was a chemistry set I got when I was 10.  It was fascinating to me how by itself, the dry and dusty chemicals could be innocuous and boring, but put together with another element or compound, amazing things would happen.  Sometimes things so violent they were even explosive.  I loved that!… which is why when I graduated high school I left home to attend a university to study chemistry.

But through the course of my college years I would come to discover that my love wasn’t for chemistry, per se.  Nor was it for electronics or really anything material.  Oh, it was fascinating to me — and it still is — but not for its material properties or strange behaviors.  It was interesting because it represented some kind of operating principle inside me, a kind of passion or fascination for the reality of deep things, or things that operated behind the curtain, out of sight, back-stage, below the surface.  (The other thing I loved to do growing up was writing.  When I learned to write my name, I wrote it on everything — the walls, books, the floor.  I remember my mom once pointing to one of the signatures I wrote on the wall asking me if I did it.  I said no.  She didn’t buy it.  I guess I was more creative than I was shrewd.)

It was around this time that I began a long trek back home to the heart of God, a prodigal who had decided some time before that life would be better out there on my own.  It was not.  Anyway, the invitation I heard that started me on my journey of coming back home to Him was an invitation into the depths.  Funny enough, one of the books that had a huge impact on my life at the time was Calvin Miller’s Into the Depths of God.  For the first time ever in my life, I was invited to explore the deep — the endlessly deep and extravagantly beautiful and intricate — heart of God.

To this day, He remains way cooler than the guts of a telephone or radio.

But there is a price to entering into the depths of God.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of the cost of discipleship in a book by that title.  “Costly grace,” he wrote, “is the gospel which must be sought again and again… It is costly because it costs a man his life.”  But he also knew the cost was worth it, for “it gives a man the only true life.”  Dallas Willard said someone should write a book called The Cost of Non-Discipleship, because he feels the cost is far greater.

Jesus’ invitation is often a painful one.  He will ask us to give up all that keeps us afloat and on the surface and risk plunging into the heart of the questions we dare not ask aloud, to enter into the deep wounds of our lives so as to know His healing, to explore the stretches of the gospel on earth, to know the rich expanses of His love and how far it will really reach.  This is indeed a frightful invitation.  It is a dangerous one.  You never know what you’ll end up discovering or leaving behind, or what He will ask of you, or what the journey will require.

I’ve discovered life there, though.  It really is to be found.  Like anyone who has really tasted God, who has really tried Him out and tried Him on (this He dares us to do — see Psalm 34:8), I’m wasted for anything less.  I’m not “there” yet, but I’ve found the journey one worth taking.  The sea is dangerous, but we are made for it.  As St. Augustine understood it, we will be restless until we finally allow our hearts to find rest in the Resistless One.