I think that if one were to look back through all the blogs i’ve written here, or all those i’ve deleted while closing my Xanga pages, they would find the one theme that overrules all is Longing.
I long for God.
At this moment i’m listening to the worship service from Saturday night after listening to it multiple times for the last three days. I’m listening because the songs give words to the groaning of my heart.
“Love of God, overflow!
Permeate all my soul!”
“Fill me up God. Fill me up God. Fill me up God!”
Those who know me well know that i am an avid reader. I always have a book in hand or in mind. I generally cannot wait for my half hour break at work or free time at home so that i can open up my book and dive straight in. I generally know what the next two or three books i want to read. Needless to say, i really enjoy reading. I enjoy reading because i enjoy learning. I think that i could sit in class rooms for hours as well. By nature, i am a student.
Strangely, i’ve recently encountered a new emotion while reading. Frustration.
Frustration at all the words i was hearing in my mind. It came to a point where i didn’t want conversation with anyone. All i had was words.
Words, words, words.
They were beginning to hold little meaning to me.
After pondering this for a few days i think i know why. I have replaced meditation, encounter with the living Christ, with knowledge. I learn more and more and in the learning i have drifted from the Bridegroom. I allowed growth in knowledge to replace the ecstasy of love in Jesus. The words i was reading were lifeless because i had become lifeless. Reading had replaced prayer. Knowledge replaced encounter. Learning replaced revelation.
I realized quickly that when i tried to pray i had nothing to say. I could not hear anything. I could not “connect” to the Holy Spirit. All i could feel was the dullness of my boring heart.
Something has to be done.
I’m trying something new. I’m laying aside the books, except the Bible, for an extended period of time and i am asking God to speak to me, to meet me, to encounter me. What i need, what i want, most of all is to know the love of God and to love him back. Instead of spending my free time listening to people from the past who knew him, i am going to listen to him. Hopefully, i’ll come out of this knowing Jesus a little better than i have before.
Even at the thought of NOT reading and sitting before the Lord my heart has been leaping. I know that the Father himself loves me. The dream of my heart is to be able to sit in peace before him and hear him because he is the only one who has the words of life.
Can there be a more valuable treasure?
St. Thomas Aquinas, considered the greatest theologian and writer in Christian history, has inspired me to search for Jesus with all my soul. Being the reader and (aspiring) writer i am, his story weighs heavy for me.
Near the end of his life while approaching the end of his greatest work, the Summa Theologica, he had a vision where Jesus said to him, “You have written well of me Thomas. What do you desire?”
Thomas replied, “None other than Thyself, Lord.” He was taken up into some kind of trance and experienced something so great of the love of Jesus that he never wrote or spoke of the details to anyone. When his secretary pleaded with him to finish the Summa Thomas cried, “I can do no more after what I have seen… Such secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written seems like straw!”
This seems like a good goal.
Good stuff brother, keep writing. I will be praying for revelation and encounter in your prayer life as well as in your time in the Word…thanks for sharing.
-dan