[august contemplations]

8.8 My life's gone off-track, I'm spiraling out of control, I need God back in my life. I've all but fallen off the horse (or, at least, hopped onto another one). I've found it to be the case that the life lived for oneself is one best marked by emptiness, regret, a growing deadness, a cold vice wrapping around a weakening heart. There's no joy here, no peace, only an inner turmoil bathed in darkness. This is all my doing, my own stubborn rebellion, my constant obsession with myself, the frustration with God culminating in a life of foolish, selfish antics. It's time to grow up, to take action, to get serious about what really matters. 

8.9 I've been praying that God would break me, show me my deep need for him, make me want him again. "And God gave them up..." This is the consequence of a life inclined to the self rather than to God, the end-result of a heart lusting after its own crude wants rather than enlivened in its devotion to its Creator. This is a pig-pen, and I lie here filthy and stinky and in rags. There are two options: stay on this course or go home. I can either keep living this fruitless and draining life, persisting in my hope that some fortune will befall me on the winding road; or I can surrender, confess my sins to the Creator, throw myself into his arms and find mercy, grace, refreshment & renewal. Sometimes a man's heart is so curled in on itself that it takes a brush with death and a cold, stinging slap to bring him to his senses, make him see what he's done, what he's become. We can be so deep in slumber, so intoxicated in ourselves, that it takes an earthquake to jar us awake. And what is to be found in surrender, in confessing our evil and waywardness, in kneeling before the king we've all but disavowed and begging for mercy? Not the sword, and not just mercy, but grace, reconciliation, partnership in the king's family and kingdom, and the promise that though life may be a calloused and heartless whore, we're more than conquerors. Life may be a bitch, but there's the promise that in due time all things will be well, and all manner of things well. Hope and human flourishing is to be found in a life of devotion to our Creator, and a life of self-devotion is one marked by decay and culminating in the greatest of deaths. I don't know what will happen with all the frenzied chaos in my life right now, but I know it's time to go home. [written from The Anchor, 5:04 PM]