The path of our spiritual lives can and will lead at some point to some seriously dry ground. A desert in fact. Turns out there isn’t any water in a desert.
Parched becomes a reality not a metaphor and very quickly our spiritual sensitivity evaporates as we go brittle. Our souls feel cracked, dry and empty of everything flexible and accommodating as we sense our soft hearts becoming rigid and dusty. Lots of us know what I’m talking about and the rest are in denial.
Life can suck all of the moisture out of our lives and leave us completely barren, empty of anything to share or live or love.
We won’t allow ourselves to live that way for long... something will need to change, or we will die. Anything that gives us a chance for change will grab our immediate attention... ANYTHING that promises to make us happy. We’ll listen intently to anything or anyone that seems to know a way to show us a better life. We long to someday find hope and we stranglehold onto anything we believe will bring some desperately needed refreshment to our desert.
It can be a new relationship or an old relationship (thank you Facebook)... a new life mission or worthy charitable effort to save the world. It can be an over focused obsession for our kids to succeed where we failed... or more knowledge, higher education, a new fashionable look or an alternative profession to replace our current dull existence. But for sure, if you're in a real desert... we can’t, we won’t allow ourselves to suffer too long... it HURTS TOO MUCH.
Truthfully, our chosen distractions will bring some relief; they really do. Sometimes even for a long time. Unfortunately it/they don’t ever completely refresh us. We revive for a season... but eventually it wears thin, and then the light flickers out... leaving us exactly where we began, alone and in the desert of our soul.
What if we chose to look to our Christian faith?
What if we choose to quit chasing an emotional thrill or the next “must have” distraction or possession and instead make a simpler determination, a less sexy – but-oh-so-rewarding choice to ask God to make us like His son Jesus...
King Solomon said it like this in Proverbs 3
Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
8 It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones (Proverbs 3:7-8 ESV).
Why not end living in a desert that endlessly repeats like an evil version of “Groundhog Day” and chose instead to let God work in our hearts to re-align our wants, desires and ambitions into something much better... something Jesus called, true life.
That would be like digging deeper, or drilling down into our faith to get vertical.
I believe responding to Christ Jesus will be the only true solution to get rid of that brittle-about-life feeling that can start to smolder in our souls.
