Sharpe’s little blog

I’m tempted to apologize for my blog silence over the past few weeks. I say tempted because we’ve all seen the “sorry for not posting more” blog entries, which are typically then followed by another 3+ weeks of non-blogging. Instead, I’ll preface this entry by stealing a quote that I found on the blog of Daniel Tashian (lead singer of the Bees, and maker of the incredible (and free!) Lovetest record):

“Have omitted my diary for two or three days, I lost heart to make it up, and left it unfilled for many a month and day. During this period, nothing has happened worth particular notice. The same occupations, the same amusements, the same occasional alterations of spirits, gay or depressed, the same absence of all sensible or rational cause for one or the other- I half grieve to take up my pen, and doubt if it is worth while to record such an infinite quantity of nothing. But hang it! I hate to be beat, so here goes for better behavior.”

-Sir Walter Scott

There’s also a big part of me that feels like my silence has been justified. The past few weeks have been difficult for me, and most of what’s been on my heart and mind are the type of thing that should not be communicated in a public forum like this. To catch up those who have not heard, I am no longer at Pine Ridge. I anticipate that would bring up questions, but I really don’t think that this would be the wisest forum to discuss the whys and wherefores. If you want to know, ask. I do want to say that I’ve been blessed to have some really good friends and counselors during this time that have really cared for me. God has been doing a lot of teaching and molding on me, largely because of these men. I am very thankful.

As you might expect, this season has thrown much confusion and anxiety in my face. I’ve been spending a lot of 2007 feeling like there’s something about life that I just don’t understand. As providence would have it, I am also in the midst of reading through the Prophets for a class I will be taking in March. It occurred to me that there is something very particular and interesting about the nature of the prophets: that you had these half-crazed guys screaming out to the people of God - a people that were massively diluted as to what they should be doing. The prophets were saying to Israel, “You don’t get it! True life is in repentance, not in avoidance and distraction.”

A friend in the counseling program and I got to talking a few weeks ago about the nature of faith and pain. As we were talking, I realized that I’ve had this pretty backwards for most of my life. I’d always figured that if you had faith, life would work better. Put another way, the real solution to the pain of life is to have faith. Like faith were just another opiate that will make you somehow feel better - and I’d give it a blithe title like “the peace of Christ.” It was almost as though I thought that faith in God should mean that suffering would be revealed as just another illusion.

That’s not what I believe anymore. Faith is not a way to escape pain. It’s the only way that pain makes any kind of sense. Faith is the realization that there is a pain that comes from living in a dying world. It is faith that says that there is more going on here than some sum of right and wrong decisions. There is more going on than simply a momentary discomfort that can be appeased by any of a thousand medications. The rocks and trees and grains of sand are screaming for a deeper glory. There is redemption happening in this heart, and a renewal that is pushing towards a final consummation for this whole broken world. And He is not slow, as some understand slowness to be. Christ is at work in 10,000 places all around me, weaving His global epic across all of history.

It’s this voice that I am needing to hear from the Prophets.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 9th, 2007 at 2:30 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.