Thursday, December 8, 2011

Engaging Deep Without Choosing The Meloncholy

I used to teeter between light and dark, in my thought-life that is. Sinking to low points and wrestling with hard questions and sitting in the “deep” places. I used to think it was super cool to be melancholy, maybe sit in a coffee shop with a weird hat and ponder the meaning of life. Discussions usually led to injustice, which always brought up all those bad things that happened that weren’t fair. And the inevitably of sadness mixed with pride would follow – the thing most artists and philosophers secretly and sometimes not so secretly think about themselves…(I am brilliant, deep, super cool).

Honestly, I think it’s all bullshit now; like a misguided misfit trying to make myself seem important, trying to self-protect by way of over-intellectualization and justification and victim-minded boohooing. There is a place and time for processing, for getting it out there, for feeling through the unfairness and harshness this life can sometimes send our way. But to sit in it, like those damn Occupy Wall Street-ers avoiding work and laws in order to “prove a point” that they’ll never really prove anyway, is pathetic and juvenile. A waste of time and space.

We get one chance at this life. One opportunity to become whatever we were meant to be. And I so firmly do believe in a plan and a purpose for each created being. I believe in that so fervently that it grieves me when I see people choosing to be victims instead of overcomers. I hate seeing waste.

The older I get the more I see this. Is it a new phenomenon, part of the DNA of whatever generation I am a part of (X, post-modern, post post modern)? I don’t know. But I do know that I see a lot of thirty year old children, living in the past – making excuses for the future - in the name of being deep and artistic and super cool.

I guess I’m just venting for some reason or another today, but I just want to say…people, life is TOOOO short and precious and meaningful for us to be anything other than what we were created to be. Don’t sell yourself short in the name of “being deep.”

God is love, God is light. Live in that; put your hope in Him and He will give you meaning and purpose for your “deep.”

Psalm 42
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?” These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.

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