I'm home, and I miss everyone at Cornell already. Scenes/memories of this year, of warmth run through my mind, and it baffles me how people can have so much love. I am truly overwhelmed. And my heart aches.
In middle school I was very bad at this. at moving on / saying goodbye /'dealing' with loving people and warm memories. And by very bad I mean crying for 1-2 years after someone special to me moved away. I wasn't good at this at all. Not that I'm any better now, but I guess God has taught me a lot since then. about pressing on toward the goal, looking ahead. And also that my heart/mind should be fixed on Him.
All this came to me as I stumbled across the song "Consuming Fire"
There must be more than this, O breath of God come breathe within
There must be more than this, Spirit of God we wait for you
Fill us anew we pray, Fill us anew we pray
The key phrase that resonated with me was "there must be more than this". In my mind, it meant: there must be more than this; there must be more to life than constantly seeking that warmth of friendship, and replaying those nice fuzzy memories, and longing to be entrenched in a community of love. There is more to life than harmonious loving relationships. All these are very good, and even Apostle Paul says that he thanks the Lord every time he thinks of his brothers. So I don't mean that we should forget people once they are not around us; that's not good. Paul constantly prayed for people in various places and wrote them encouraging letters when he couldn't be with them, and Paul said that he yearned to be with them. And we should do the same: continue to pray, love and encourage brothers and sisters who are not with us at the moment. Yet, at the same time, we should set our minds on things above, continue to press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward.
A pastor wrote: "But if we have no vision, we perish because we end up spending all of our energy either trying to find pleasure or working to stay out of pain"
and that's kind of how I feel about changes in life. When we have a vision, a goal, a direction in life, we won't spend our time constantly seeking pleasure or preoccupied with avoiding pain. Of course, having a direction in life doesn't mean knowing exactly what God has called you to, because we don't know. And I struggled so long with this and still do, because I long to know what it is that God has called me to do so that I can start running after it.
It.
'so that I can start running after it'.
There is something wrong with that statement. And I keep forgetting that it's not really about running after your calling in life, but running after God. And God will guide you to where He wants you to be and what He wants you to do. so this vision, this direction in life is God. And this leads me to share another song that has been on my heart: "One Pure and Holy Passion"
Give me one pure and Holy passion
Give me one magnificent obsession
Give me one glorious ambition for my life
To know and follow hard after you
And that is the ambition, and that is the direction: to run after God. Not ministry or calling, but God.
And if you look at the big guys in the old testament: David, Moses, Joseph, etc. None of them had this grand plan of how they were going to do something awesome for God, but God chose them. And God put them where they needed to be and told them what to do. And all the glory went to God. A lot of times, I think that I need to come up with this awesome idea/plan of what I'm gonna do in the future, but then I forget that that's not what life is about.
: ))
ReplyDeletegood thinking!!
nice. keep looking up.
ReplyDelete