A Labyrinthine Journey: Soon Coming in 3-D

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst…” – Matthew 5:6

It goes against our grain to celebrate being empty. We are a people who seek more ways to live full lives. In fact in our US culture we aren’t satisfied with just being full and satisfied, we seek to be overfull. We have become gluttons in all ways. We are not content with just super-sizing our meals, we want the Hummers and the larger pickup trucks. We build houses that keep getting larger and larger. We are not content with just having an active church, we seek out the mega-churches. Somehow we think that the abundant life means living over the top in every way. I like to say we don’t do well with fasting in our church, but we are getting a head start on the feasting part.

We get stuck in that attitude with our relationship with God, too, I’m afraid. We are drawn from mountaintop emotional experience to mountaintop experience. Our criteria for a worship has become if we felt ourselves moved. Oh sure, we talk about the glory of God and how Great God is and all those good words, but are they just used to justify the excess. And does that lead to healthy lives: physically, emotionally and spiritually? I am skeptical.

Yet, with all that excess are we really full? I think not. We are still stuck with being discontent. We hunger and thirst for God, but fill our lives with programs and activities and committees and responsibilities and … and … I think you can fill in the gaps yourself. Therein lies the problem, we thirst for God and try to get filled with things of God, but they are no substitute for God’s Own Self. In fact, we could say that this is a definition of idolatry: putting things of creation in the place of the creator.

The discontent is the invitation to us. We easily view it as a problem, but instead it is the reminder that we are missing the main thing: our intentional living in the presence of God.

So what are we to do with this hunger and thirst? How are we to respond to the emptiness in the depths of our being? How should our lives reflect our sense that something is not right with our world and our selves?

One response is despair. We can choose to believe that emptiness is all there is for us to be. Instead of the hunger for God being an invitation from God to be filled with God alone, we can decide that God has abandoned us. We can live in the forgetfulness of divine grace and love. Our despair and depression becomes for us an existence enshrouded with worry, fear, hopelessness, or anger, bitterness and resentment. “God said we are to be filled, we have been hoodwinked.” Therein lies a major problem with a message that preaches the “good news” of prosperity. There is no place for wilderness wanderings. The holy mountains of Sinai and Olives need to become malls of spiritual baubles and blessings.

Our lives have become too full with the abundance of the things of God there is no room for God unless our lives become shaken and emptied out.

“… for they shall be filled.” Matthew 5:6b

That is not the only choice available to us. I have realized that the way to true abundance is to celebrate the hunger of my soul and bring it to God for God alone to fill. This is a dangerous choice to make, because it has to accept the idea that I have become too used to using false things to fill my thirst for God. I have for too long looked to my calling and people’s approval to cover over the discontent. I have tried a lot of the self-help programs (holy and unholy) to paint my empty rooms with new pleasant colors, but the discontent remains.

Lately, it is only when I come to God and give up all those other endeavors that I find a new and different abundance begin to fill my soul. It is when I come and confess the foolishness of my choices to be filled with other things that I see the way open up to make some new choices, choices that truly affirm the God-Life. It also means that I have to leave part of my life empty. As God fills our lives we grow more hungry and more thirsty for more of God. And as we grow we learn that there is no real substitute for that Loving Presence.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 19th, 2006 at 9:15 pm and is filed under spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.