“The problem with the self-made man is that he worships his creator. But eventually, we grow weary. Life is hard. Its propensity is to wear us down. It is hard being on the throne.”
Jim Ramos
It’s hard to be your own god. You weren’t made that way, and neither was I. We were made to worship the true and living God and to draw closer to Him through His only begotten Son, Jesus.
Ending my time in the wilderness
Last November, as my mom was approaching death, I wrote that My Mood Matches the Desert. From a personal standpoint, I have been through a season in the wilderness of about four years, and that article captured many of my feelings after spending two sacred days in a sacred room, watching the veil between this life and the next become less tangible.
But that was only part of a culmination of a long season of life. One book in my library calls the process which my wife, Michelle, and I have been through Wintering.
The author, Katherine May, wrote:
“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”
Wintering has defined our lives, and our family’s existence, for long enough. I’m ready for that season to end. And it is. Michelle’s cancer treatment has ended, and though she’s still fragile, with the combined miracles of good medical professionals and thousands of prayers answered, she is cancer-free. And my heart is full.
Now, I’m ready for it to end faster. I’m ready to play my part in putting an end to my winter in the wilderness.
Drawing closer to the Father and Son
One personal lesson learned more recently is there’s really only one path to follow next. For so many years I have tried to be a self-made man – worshiping God, but truly worshiping Him from a distance. That, combined with the stress and trauma of the past four years, has made me weary. I don’t believe I can go on any longer without drawing closer to our Father.
This has become Priority #1:
To pursue the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit the same way they pursue me.
To walk with God, or try to, the same way that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, Enoch, Moses, and so many others have walked with God.
To change from a son of God who sits on his own throne to being a son of God who kneels at THE throne to bathe the Father’s and Son’s feet with my tears of repentance.
For the past ten days or so, I’ve spent a part of each day dissecting Romans chapter 8, written by Paul to the members of the Church at that time who lived in Rome. If we bring that letter forward to our time, we have a letter from the great apostle to the Church among the World of the last days. In Chapter 8, I found a personal letter written to me to leave behind the things of the world and to concern myself more with the matters of the Spirit and of eternity. Try it. I’m sure you’ll find the same letter which I found.
I have a debt of gratitude to Paul for writing Romans 8. He helped me to see the path forward.
“Go forth on your path, as it exists only through your walking.”
Saint Augustine
There are no shortcuts
This was a small theme of my November 9th article. It feels self-explanatory, but it’s also a lesson which I seem to have to remind myself over and over.
The world’s advertising is full of promises to shortcut every fear, want, or desire. Magic pills and shots, 90-day boot camps, and cash-generating secrets. But that’s not the path Abraham found to finally come to be referred to as a friend of God. That’s not the path found by Joseph who was thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, accused unjustly, only to finally make a friend in prison who forgot him.
“Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgot him.”
Genesis 40:23
Ouch.
Two more years, Joseph languished in prison … Well, it was Joseph, so he probably didn’t languish. I would have languished. Joseph would have turned prison into paradise by then.
Priority #1 is to draw closer to God and Priority #2 is to continuously remind myself there are no shortcuts to the process.
