Some kind of race

Hurry, hurry, hurry if you want to get the best before it's gone..........and it's going to be gone if you don't hurry --

I have a problem. The things I think I want always deceive me. They make me think I must have them now - but not because they're going away...no, it's because I have been at this long enough to know that my wanting will probably disappear. By my wanting and then getting what I want, even when the want is gone I will have that thing I wanted - as a little reminder of who I was in that moment of time. What I absolutely had to have and couldn't rest without. Let me illustrate.

I have a Game Boy Advance with about 10 games. This was a product of my insatiable desire to regain lost years of gaming as a child, since my parents felt my having a game system in my school years would lead to no good. (It's ok - don't feel too sad for me. My friend Mary had one, and I spent a lot of time over there.) So, as a 25 year old woman, I watched the prices fall on these little beauties, watched the sale ads, drooled over the color choices, and looked at them in every store I visited. Finally, one day, I did it. I bought the Game Boy. Color? Flame.

And I played. I bought the old Nintendo games for this little beauty, attempting to fill those little holes in me that screamed, "I never beat Super Mario Brothers! I never saved the princess!!" And I carried it around with me just for fun and show - like I'd somehow really made it into my generation by owning this - my right of passage.

If indeed I needed this thing, if my desire for and acquiring of this little toy was a necessary part of my story, then why is it sitting in the back seat of my car under the pile of crap I carry around with me at all times just in case? Why did I go through a period of several weeks between moves where you could have asked me where it was, and I'd have told you I had no idea? Why do I have it? Don't get me wrong - I do enjoy the fact that I can play Risk any time I want. But on any given day, when I do find down time, what I choose to do with that time says everything about me.

Balance is a word that I think about a lot. I always come back to the idea that too much of anything spoils. I know that I am not happy on the other side of 6 hours of TV watching. I know that if I blow an entire evening with my Game Boy, I'll wake up tired and wondering why I didn't read something, or write something, or talk to someone. Time suckers.

My church has been dealing lately with the idea of rest. That perhaps we've never learned what that word means. We think that somehow just not working equals rest. But in truth, rest takes an entering in. You don't just find yourself in it - you have to go there. You have to choose to direct yourself towards it, walk to the door, open it, and step into it. And (alas) it takes an exiting as well. Beauty, though - you can actually frequent this place. Make it home. Make it where you go any chance you get.

I distinctly remember a time in my life where I knew what this looked like. I was in early high school, and my days were cramped and crowded. But my nights...when the house was quiet, and I was supposed to be headed to bed, I would instead rest. Candles, journal, Bible, and Iona playing softly in the background. I would sprawl on my floor and just totally let down in the presence of God. I can't even begin to explain what kind of things went on there - so sweet, so real. The pages of my Bible are wrinkled from both my tears as I longed for more of what He was showing me - and my drool, when I would wake up with my cheek stuck to the words somewhere in the Psalms. This overwhelming sense that all of me was exactly the way it should be. That who I was, and who I was becoming at that time made perfect, orderly sense to my Father, and that He was in fact making me...the same way He had been making me from the beginning. My beginning.

All of this is right. I didn't know then that I was being taught perhaps the most profoundly practical lesson I'd ever get about walking with God. Intimacy. Intimacy. Intimacy.

So if it's not my bedroom floor from 11-3am, maybe it's the back porch from 6-8. Maybe it's a park bench at dawn. Maybe it's the drive to work. Maybe it's the kitchen table at 11am, when no one else is home. Wherever you can get quiet, alone, still, and wait - just wait. If you don't know how to get to rest, ask. If you don't know what it looks like for you, ask. I think it is as individual as you are. Jesus liked mountains. I do too, but not living near any, I have to settle for something else - a trail at a local park that gives the illusion of solitude and wilderness. Just find it. Go there. Go go go go. In the endless words of Over the Rhine, the world can wait.

So what about what we want? I just know that the only thing I've ever desired and gotten and kept desiring is Jesus. The only place I go to get what I want and leave both satisfied and still longing is in that place of rest with Him. Everything else means nothing, if I can't have Him.

"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him..." -Philippians 3:7-9a

Is it possible that what we really want is to be in Him? To go back to where we came from - all wrapped up like a baby, tight, safe, warm, secure and totally at rest - in the heart of the one who made us? Whatever else we want has been lying to us. Oh, people of God, wake up to what you really want. Let us burn inside for one thing - intimacy with God, knowing Him, being found in Him. God, give us pure hearts! Let our hearts desire only what is real, only what can be found in You. Let us not forget what we were made for. Let us run after You.