These are the things with which I am struggling, currently.
ME
I do not really like myself. Up until this year, I think I’ve found myself to be pretty cool. I have interesting style, speak well, sing well, play guitar well, listen well, write well enough, have interesting and trendy hobbies (bike, hike, sail, woodwork, reading), I am a leader of sorts (RUF, Camp, various jobs/clubs), have many friends, have a sweet house at home and a sweet family in it, attend a sweet college and live in a cool house, do homework on a laptop listening to an ipod through a sound-system, drink tea from a mug and text friends on my cell phone. My build is moderate, my hair is thick and curly and people like it. I have some facial hair (though it remains incomplete). I’m good at dancing, and listening, and building, and photography. I have a sweet camera, a mandolin, and I made two wooden drums. I really like my family, and they love me well, and I really like my friends, and they love me well. I like almost all the things I have, and almost all the things I do, but I don't really like myself.
I should be cool, by all accounts. Maybe I am. But I'm afraid all of that means nothing to me, at this point. I don’t really find any of that to be important. Value does not come from any of it. I feel, with Paul, that all my best are nothing but dirty cloths.
And this is what I don’t like. I’m not sporty. I am not THAT good at guitar. I let my friends down, all the time. I let my family down. More than either, I let myself down, as my expectations for how I should love my friends and family are never met. I don’t have time enough, and the time I do have is not used as well as it could be (I suspect). And I doubt. I wrestle with doubt ALL THE TIME. More in the winter. Summer is usually better. I question the existence of God and the personhood of God, the trinitarian nature of God, the love of God, my position in relation to God, the role of someone in God's kingdom, the role of the church, the meaning of ministry, the meaning of love. Which is part of the reason that I have no idea what I’m doing next year (another thing I don't like). I have spent much of my life attempting to prove my relationship with God, to find security in his voice to me, or my ability to exercise the miraculous, to lead, to know scripture, and so I spend much of my time now wondering if I know Him at all. Sometimes I wonder if I want to. To know God is not a light burden, and yet it is. Death to self is a release of all weight, and yet it is the heaviest of all things.
No, not all of my pursuit of God was useless or wrong. Much of it has come out of excitement over understanding God, which is a good thing. I won’t repent of that, at least not now.
But I still was not pursuing him as a response to His love for me. And that is what I don’t like most of all. I don’t always believe God loves me. Sometimes I do, but other times I don’t think there’s a chance. Because I don’t like myself all that much.
GOD
Why would an omnibenevolent omnipotent sovereign God have hell? Free will gives an excuse, but it feels false. God created the world, and everything in it- even if he started billions of years ago, the placement of each atomic particle is largely what determines our presence today. We are but nature and nurture. But even our nurture is from nature’s many years, and influences. Nature vs nature more removed. And creation is the Lord’s.
I feel so desperately that I need a systematic theology to understand God. Yet, I know in Him there is freedom, o such sweet freedom. And in Him there is joy, o what joy! And peace, and true reconciliation. I believe it, even when the taste has faded from my tongue and when the twinkle has faded from my eyes. O, it is true. How can you, the God I know of love and strength, let those you love walk away from you?
Dear heavenly Father, my heart is broken for those I passed today on the highway, for those in New England and the the Bible Belt and Ukraine and North Korea and South Africa and China and France. Are you answering my prayer that my heart would break for what breaks Yours? Oh sovereign God, how does your heart break at all? And yet it does! oh Father it does, for your children, your rebel child Israel, your pharisaical church, your doubting children who squirm in their uncertainty instead of dance in Your love. For those you made, those whose hairs you have counted. Those whose smile you molded, just so. Oh dear God, how can this be? How can your heart break like this? How can mine?
Sweet compassion, from your eyes, raining on sinners and saints alike.
Compassion in my eyes too.
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