My son Jess and I went to see the movie “The Book of Eli” last night. It’s a great movie that got me thinking.
I no longer want to be a reactionary human being. I don’t want to climb on the next bandwagon to who-knows-where. I listen to the noise that begs me to scramble for significance by assisting this group or that. I hear the heartwarming stories and find more public relations oozing from the message than I do actual service.
I feel like a child sitting in a room of munched and mangled toys. The world wants me to throw out the old, buy new, clean up the mess or hide what can’t be fixed under the bed or in the closet. The culture writes up its rules for participation and holds them over my head as though I must chose to jump in line.
What happens when something jolts my life so hard that the message begins to taste like oatmeal cooked without salt? What happens when those things that once smelled so sweat begin to ferment and smell more like the remnants of a Dairy Farm than a rose garden?
Oswald Chambers says; “The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service for Him.”
So, what would happen if I stopped listening to the noise and instead listened to that still small voice that says; “Stop, leave the mess as it is, don’t clean up the room simply follow me.”
We live in a world searching for significance and in that search has lost the meaning behind what it’s really doing. How often we hear folks say, “How good it felt to help out.” What if “Feeling good” doesn’t matter? What if serving people, for the right reasons, doesn’t feel at all?
So, there I sit, in the middle of the room, plugging my ears, looking at the ceiling, wondering why life has suddenly become so much more complicated. In some ways I wish I could go back to the days when just hiding the mess was enough.
