For the most part people really don’t work.
They kind of keep busy. Buzzing around performing actions that keep things moving.
People change things like moving a dish rag to the other side of a sink, or delete their emails, organize their desk. If things change then it seems as if work has been done.
Production is a very small part of someone’s day. Making something of use and effecting the world in a way that will make someone’s day better.
If only we knew what it was we are all striving for. We hunger we eat. We tire we sleep. We live we…wonder.
What is it? What is this all for? We experiment everyday trying to fill that purpose driven vacancy.
We endure and strive repeating things over and over again hoping they accumulate to a resolve.
Is there a secret way of living life that will actually amount to something.
Aren’t we all trying to get to that place where we are sustained, happy and full?
A life with just enough challenge, just enough that comes effortlessly. Just enough change and just enough that stays the same? The right amount of hunger and the perfect meal.
But we are a purpose driven people. We have needs and wants and we fill those needs and wants.
When we can’t fill needs and wants we are miserable and when we do achieve them we are ecstatic.
But we are quick to need and want again. It’s the driving force of life.
Buddha says that desire is the bane of man, but I believe it defines them. After all even Buddha was trying to attain a want-less life…. And wasn’t satisfied until he could attain it.
We all do something that works for a while and then we long for it. A time in our life when we were close to fulfilled. But we always are ready to risk being completed in order to pursue something else we need. Is it the journey then that is the best part? Is it finally getting there?
It is the glory of God to hide a thing and the glory of kings to seek it out. Proverbs 25:2
What does any of this mean? The bible is a conundrum of hidden meanings and confusing texts. Written in a culture we are completely disconnected from. This isn’t the bibles fault… or anyone’s really.
We just don’t live in times with kings, measure things with our arms, or trade in sheep.
I don’t own any sheep and if I did I don’t know anyone who would trade me anything for it.
I also admittedly don’t know anything about kings. It seems archaic to me that one man would have complete power and control over a nation. It would seem to me that that person would live very selfishly and enjoy the life I want to live while I work some terrible laborious job that they get the paycheck for.
But the cool thing about the bible is that it has changeable parts. It is a living document that continues to adapt to life and changing times. The reason this is is because the bible is so advanced and so far ahead of it’s time that it is almost an alien technology. To an untrained eye it seems like an old book full of weird meaning and inapplicable truth. In fact it is a book that is so powerful people have been discovering new things every time they open it.
The bible is magic. It’s the only way to explain it.
Now I didn’t say the bible is witchcraft. I said it is magic. Something that is magic is something that has supernatural properties to it. Properties that defy scientific explanation. Something wondrous. Science hates magic because you can’t define it or control it. Magic is powerful and is something that can only be wielded by those who will bend to its will rather than demand that it be pliable and that your will can be forced upon it.
Now we can’t blame science. Science like many things is wonderful and horribly tainted by people.
Science is this ability to pursue and seek out truth, but there are some rather stiff shirts out there that wag their fingers, shake their heads and scoff at such things. It is entirely ok…. These people used to believe the world was flat, that man couldn’t fly, and that you could remove diseases by covering people in blood sucking leeches. They have come a long way but still seem to be very solid on the idea that magic doesn’t exist.
Everyone makes mistakes.
The Bible however is magical. It’s the only reason why it has lasted so long against such odds and has shaken the world with such amazing miracles.
Most people don’t like the word magic because it implies trickery and evil spirits. I assure you that those things are witchcraft and witchcraft is the enemy of magic. Witchcraft is always entirely practiced by people with a desire to make things bend to their desires and they cast spells and all sorts of counterfeit to do so. But that is a story for another time.
God knows that magic exists. God is supernatural…. Actually magic/supernatural is God and we see it in everything he does.
Love is magical, Hope is magical, Life is magical.
And it’s only so important to realize that God is magical because we have gotten into a war based on someone else’s rules. A lot of people , including my dad who fought during the war, attribute the difficulties and loss of the Vietnam to fighting the war on their terms and by their rules on their field.
And Christianity is losing to science for the same reasons.
It is as if we have tried to rationalize God in order to make him appeal to rational minds.
We have taken the magic and the supernatural out of God so much that we really don’t even truly believe in miracles do we?
I do. I don’t believe in a God of witchcraft and cheap illusions. I do believe in a God who brings fire from the sky, heals people, raises the dead, and walks on water.
It doesn’t get much more magical than that. God is Magic and so is the bible.
And that is the very thing missing from life isn’t it? The thing missing from your purpose, the longing you desire is the desire for magic to happen again in your life. We have allowed ourselves a rational amount of magic to happen on movie screens and in good books and video games. But those things can be shut off, closed, and powered down can’t they?
We have taken something that scares us and we have controlled it and packaged it so that we can be in charge. We can’t possibly live in a world where things are out of our control… those things would run amuck and make decisions without consulting us first. They might not have our interests at heart.
So we are told they are make believe and to ignore them and not pretend. Children are stronger than us at matters of the heart aren’t they. Let me explain. There is a big difference between child-like and childish. It is good to raise a child to be responsible and selfless and so we want them to mature past childishness. We however lose the war entirely to childlikeness. Try as you will children believe in magic so whole heartedly that the only way we can break them is with punishment and humiliation over years. And even then it doesn’t work to well does it?
Children’s imaginations and concerns are of those of possibility and the fantastical. They believe in magic so much that we as a society in our war of rationality have given up on fighting against children all together. In fact we envy them their confidence that the magical and supernatural exists. It’s only when we let them down as adults and deceive them that they begin to doubt. And don’t kid yourselves. There is nothing rational about doubt. We glorify it for it’s “wisdom” but doubt takes just as much foolhardy fantasy to believe in as having faith and hope.
In order to doubt things we will accept rumors and stories without research and we will leverage our pessimism just as passionately as some would leverage optimism.
But I digress.
When the bible says that it is the glory of God to hide things and the glory of kings to seek them out.
What I think this means is that God created us to endeavor and discover. He breed in us a curiosity that would never be sated. We are going to exist for an eternity and God moves us forward with one of the most magical alluring properties of all…..Mystery.
There is literally a whole universe out there that we can explore. From what I hear we have only discovered 10% of the ocean. And we might think that there is nothing down there that would change our lives or flip the world on it’s head…. But at one point and time the microscope wasn’t invented and we had no idea the amount of life and intrigue that rested literally on our fingertips and the air we breathe. Our bodies are moving planets of bacteria..
What I’m saying is that God compels people to explore. There are things buried in the dirt beneath the ice in the middle of Antarctica waiting for you to get to it. There are fish swimming in the bottom of the ocean right now that might contain a renewable chemical that would allow you to stand out in the dessert sun and not get sunburned? It’s crazy! But think how much the coffee bean and the cocoa bean have changed the world? And they were always there. Growing and dying and re-growing just waiting for us to find them.
What is holding us back?
We have this thing inside of us that wants to be God. We want to be at the top, we want to be known, we want to make the world happen the way we want it to happen. We have all been asked what we would do if we had a million dollars or super powers. We have a laundry list of things that come to mind and it is always how we would change our world. We are born with this desire.
God has a desire for us to live an incredible story. And Mystery and magic pull us forward. It’s incredible to know that magic exists and that we have a magic book that will always give us answers. Not easy answers, not instant answers, and maybe not even agreeable answers. But it’s magic. It doesn’t need us…. And yet it lives to watch us move and breathe and be amazing. I played a lot of DnD growing up. Creating characters and rolling dice moving from room to room slaying evil and collecting treasure. I collected comic book trading cards and marveled… no pun intended… at the super heroes. I dreamed of what my life would be like if I could just get the opportunity to have them.
As I got older I realized all I really wanted was for the risk to be removed. I didn’t know how to impress the girl of my dreams but if I could fly and no one else could then surely she would be impressed. I wanted to bring justice to the world. I used to walk everywhere and sometimes some idiot in a car would honk or yell out the window while they sped by like a coward. I used to think about using my telekinesis to grab onto the car with my mind and pull it back to me… tires screeching and walk up to the guys in the car and hold them accountable for their behavior. Fear in their eyes and cowardess flooding their faces a flush white.
But what it was all about was wanting to not be rejected or retaliated against. What if I yell back at the guys in the car… they stop, get out, and beat me up? What if I tell my crush I like her… but because I can’t fly she realizes she has much better prospects and rejects me. Most all, of our fantasies are about escaping discomfort or harm. However some of the best and most rewarding experiences lay directly on the other side of them both.
Most of our life is spent trying to find out what our talent or gift is or trying to develop a skill. We hope to use that skill or talent to gain enough benefit, money, respect, and power to change the world in our favor. Most of the time we settle for getting as close as we can. Sometimes we have to accept the thing we want won’t ever be ours because it is for someone else. And that is the killer of magic and hope.
In the end all we and everyone cares about is success.
In your life you will either obtain success or change the definition of it to mean what you have already accomplished.
It gets hard to hope. As a child all you have to go on is hope. You haven’t yet been given the tools or the freedom to accomplish the big plans you have. You have to engage patience and set your sights on adulthood. For most of us adulthood is like a dog chasing a car…. When he catches it he doesn’t know what to do with it. And when we are released into the wide world to take advantage of all it has to offer we lose hope. We have so many rules instilled in us it’s hard to move…. Atleast not without guilt.
For the first few years we begin to learn to throw things away or replace them. We are fed tons of advice and rules growing up that are supposed to guide us to our destiny…. But most of the time it really just ends up taking down a road towards someone elses.
A wise actor named Tom Hiddleston once said “We all have two lives…. And the second one begins when we realize we only have one.”
It’s true that at some point you realize you only have one life and you realize you are not optimizing it the way you wish.
Hope deferred makes a heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life Proverbs 13:12
Don’t we get sick of waiting?
I spent a good part of my life waiting for something to happen. I don’t even really know what was supposed to happen but I was waiting on a push, a revelation, and epiphany.
I wanted to know who I was. I figured I would run into it one day while just living day to day. It’s almost like waiting to find your soul mate. You are looking for them, but you don’t know where or when you will find them… so you do what others do. You just keep living and keep waiting for it to happen.
Good things come to those who wait. It’s not in the Bible. The bible has a lot to say about patience, but it isn’t so foolish as to make a blanket statement that if you wait… it will be good. In fact what the bible does say is …
A little sleep a little slumber and folding of the hands and poverty will come at you like a thief and wants will attack you like an armed man. Proverbs 6:10-11
I started to put those two together. Hope deferred makes you sick and waiting around will make your wants and desires gang up on you. Maybe the key was to go out and do something with my life, explore and be patient.
Maybe if I distracted myself with my purpose in life I wouldn’t sit listlessly focusing on the clock waiting for my dreams to arrive like a blind date.
Waiting for things when they are hung up on someone else or something is tough. But when all that is standing between your destiny and you…. Is you it is mortifying.
The Bible truly is a magic item. When I used to play RPG’s or games like Skyrim I learned about magic items. A normal thing that had the ability to change the world around it.
It basically suspended the rules of nature and science. A regular pair of gloves kept your hands warm and did only that. A pair of magic gloves always kept your hands warm but also gave you the ability to shoot lightning or climb walls like a spider.
It is this way that the bible is magical. There is so much wisdom contained in it that it follows you your entire life. As you grow older and experience and discover the truth about life and people all around you, you discover that the bible had said it all along. Every sentence tends to be thousands of sentences, with thousands of applications, and yet only one meaning. The pages are lifeless and alive. It’s as if it is aware of your life and feeds you. It relieves mental anguish and protects you from misdirection.
It’s like a dream in which you have a cup of cold water after a day hike and you keep drinking it, gulping it, and pouring it on your sweaty face and the water still remains full and also leaves you stuffed.
It makes more sense over time and the more you research and dig into its context and references the more you change and find your purpose.
TheWeirdChurch 