Sometimes waiting is overrated.
Like when you are trying to find happy.
There is a waiting in patience for things to come,
But there is also a taking a holding and receiving now.
Lately, I’ve been asking myself this question:
If you can’t be happy now, when will you be happy?
When you are married?
When you live in a certain place?
When you have a dog or a child or a new job?
When you are a legitimate published author?
When childhood dreams finally come true?
I am sorry for this kind of thinking. I battle it every day, and yet I am sorry for it. It’s part of being human but it doesn’t need to rule your thoughts, haunt you, turn your discontentment to misery.
Some would say, “You want to be happy? Be thankful.”
Thankfulness is necessary, but it can’t be forced. When you feel obligated to count your blessings, or you try to use it as some kind of formula to feel better about yourself, you seldom move much farther from where you started.
How can you be thankful for that which you do not see? Or maybe it’s there, right in front of you, but you can’t believe that it’s yours. Or maybe you feel like you owe someone something for the good things in your life.
Blessings are not blessings if they come with a sense of guilt, the weight of feeling indebted. Because then your thoughts turn back to you, the receiver, instead of the Giver.
“Ok, I understand you gave this to me… now what do I have to do to pay you back?”
This sounds offensive but the Giver is never offended. He just reassures you,
“Nothing. Life is a gift.”
Unhappiness comes because you wish your circumstances were better, but what if everything was already the best it could be?
Discontentment comes because you wish you had something that you do not, but what if you already had everything you need?
Not just everything you need, but everything you as a human being could ever want or dream of.
I am not talking about an object itself, but the joy that object can bring once you lay hold of it. Only this joy is not fleeting.
I am not taking about selfish desires like power or fame, but the root of those desires before they turned rotten, the need to be known, to be loved, to partake in some kind of glory outside ourselves.
What if we had love that was complete and full, that brought out the best in us, that never manipulated or had one bad motive?
What if we felt fully alive in every sense of the phrase because we were?
Then, maybe, happiness would finally be ours.
It feels to good to be true, and that’s exactly what makes it good news. It is true.
Jesus has given us his life.
The very life of God.
The very life of Pure Love.
It is there. You don’t need to do anything. You don’t need to conjure it up.
You just simply need to believe.
When you believe, a death will come. It will be a beautiful death, not the sort of death we mourn, however painful it may seem at the time.
It will be the kind of death where a seed has to die and fall to the ground for life to spring forth.
The kind of death where a shell of a person is exchanged for a radiant, glorious, perfect being.
Where there is complete satisfaction at the core of who we really are.
Where we are not waiting for “someday,” in the “sweet by and by,” because new life begins now.
It goes without saying I am not promising material wealth or that all your problems will be no more. There will be pain. There will be heartache. But deep down there will be a security no one can shake. A joy. A peace. You will know you are loved.
This is why, after years of struggle with this weird broken thing called Christianity I can say that I still believe. This is why, even after years of “being in ministry” and seeing a lot of broken promises and broken dreams, seeing people get run over and turn their backs on the church, going through real pain and despair, I still have hope.
This is the gospel. It’s Jesus. He is what makes living worthwhile.
He is living.
He is what we are all searching for: joy, happiness, glory, love.
He is it.
There is nothing else.
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