Do you ever listen to the music of life, of God? I’ve been thinking about this lately, asking questions of what is life about and what is my life meant to be. It’s turned into one of those times when God gives the answer before you ask the question for I found a book on my bookshelf I bought on sale last year at the gift shop that carries my own books near where I live. It’s called, “Long Journey Home: A Guide to Your Search for the Meaning of Life” by Os Guinness. It wasn’t the title that caught my eye but the author, he wrote another book I had to read at seminary. I’m rather picky in the Christian books I read now, thanks to my proffessors for that, for too many authors take the evangelical-go save the world for Christ-boxed and packaged Christianity point of view. I like the ones that ask the questions, not give you the answers. This book is about the journey of searching, not necessarily the meaning of the journey itself.
For some time now, I have called this music “the deeper real”, a term I came up with to describe something hard to see but intimately felt. It’s what raises me out of bed every morning and sings me to sleep every night. The deeper real is what lifts my heart through sometimes difficult days. Yesterday while I was driving home I realized how much I miss talking about God with other people. You would think someone who speaks and (really needs to) write about Him/Her, would get enough of it but I realized I really don’t. At seminary, I was surrounded by people who loved to talk about such things and we did it a lot. They were people who also heard and felt the deeper real and we shared that between us. Thinking about it, I realized there was few places in my life that talked about God, even in churches. So often in churches we talk about everything outflowing from God, peace, justice, the earth, simplicity, but we don’t talk about our relationship with God Himself/Herself. I grew up in a church where we talked about such things, shared it with each other. And through all the faults that church had, I am deeply grateful they encouraged me to be real with God, to put our relationship first and let everything follow after that. If we are taking that “long journey home” as the book says, I sure want to know who I’m going home to.
Lately in my life I have been restless, whether something is moving or coming, or just changing I cannot tell, but I am making choices. I have the courage to make decisions and to do something about things I have been unhappy about, from large to small. I think finding a way to commune with others and the deeper real will be one of these changes. I am thirsty and need to find something to drink.