Wanting, part 2
Yesterday I wrote about "The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want" and the tension between wanting more experiences with God and not lacking. Mark Galli writes in today's CT column:
I believe there is yet another reason we're fascinated with divine encounters: our boredom with the life God has given us.
Instead of a life of experience, Christ calls us to a life of love. And
a life of love for the most part means attending to the tedious details
of others' lives, and serving them in sacrificial ways that most days
feels, well, not exciting at all. Rather than sweeping the kitchen,
cleaning the toilet, listening to the talkative and boring neighbor,
slopping eggs onto a plate at the homeless shelter, or crunching numbers
for another eight hours at the office—surely life is meant for more
than this. We are tempted to wonder, Is that all there is to the
"abundant" Christian life? Shouldn't my life be more adventurous if God
is in me and all around me? How am I going to be all I'm supposed to be
if I have to empty bedpans in Peoria? I would just die if I had to do
that.
Yes, you would. Jesus called it dying to self. Love is precisely
denying the self that wants to glory in experience. The cost of
discipleship most of us are asked to pay is to live the life God has
given us, serving in mundane ways the people he has put in our path. To
be free from the self and to discover such love is the essence of
abundant life."
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