Discovery…

Imagine, if you will, that 90% of life is not what you think it is. If perchance you have lived a few years, then you have drawn some pretty solid conclusions about how this whole living life thing really works. You have caused and effected to the best of your ability and some things you simply accepted at face value. With that, there are also some parts of life that make no sense to you at all. And with explanations faltering, someone tells you stories about how this gut wrenching tragedy is somehow God’s will. Or He gives and He takes away, teaches you cruel lessons, brings you difficulties and pain to refine you or fulfill some higher cause way beyond your scope. It not only makes no sense to you, but it actually appears offensive and vulgar. Your heart cries, it cannot be. Add to this the vast consumption of knowledge available to you complete with final answers and definitive studies willingly explaining away the universe and reducing it to a big bang exploding and producing perfect things out of the debris. So, here’s the thing. What if you are wrong? What if your conclusions about life are errant because you never discerned what’s underneath it? What if the parts that make no sense make no sense because they make no sense? (Your heart already knows) What if the God you have heard about, the One that doles out indiscriminate cruelty, is not who you think He is at all? What if all the wisdom of the world failed to capture the real wisdom of the world? This life is about discovery…

The problem with knowing is, wait for it… not knowing what it is you think you know. You cannot know what you don’t know, but you cannot even learn when you think you already know. Sometimes, your life sucks because you already know everything and are in need of no new information. You have no thrill of discovery because you think you already discovered. So again I ask, how is life operating under that limited principle? What are you missing everyday that you assume you aren’t missing? Is there maybe more to this than trying to accumulate the most toys before you die? Make a ton of money and then do whatever you want, is that it? Sounds fun, but maybe not so fulfilling. Truth is there is so much more available. There is, “real life, not some imitation”as the song went. There is deep, profound purpose coupled with the discovery of what this life is all about. There is help available and not from the ones with an hourly rate. There are answers; answers your soul has searched the earth for, for years. There is clarity and resolution and restoration and deliverance and healing and salvation available to you. But He, in His infinite wisdom and unwillingness to violate your free will, is still waiting for you. He is waiting for you to climb down from that fear-based pedestal and be willing to discover something new. He is worth humbling yourself for and He will not disappoint you. You don’t have to make the first move, just respond to it. Be willing to discover…

I watched a TikTok short the other night that captured my thoughts exactly. The man speaking, who I have been unable to track down despite much searching, was speaking about how we human beings tend to think of God in terms of people. As if God were a man, subject to human fancy and whim, up one day and down the next, reliable yet sometime quite fickle, unpredictable and sometimes even wrong. However, he explained, that is not who God is at all. That is man’s ignorant construct of who God is, based again on human logic. Instead, he lovingly announced, God is actually better than we could conceive Him to be. He is more good and more kind and more compassionate than we have ever even imagined. He is life and He is love in all of its ineffable fullness, beyond our conception in every way. He actively seeks us out so that we can experience Him. So that we can finally taste the depth of this life as we prepare for the next, the one that has no end. Your confusion over pat answers explaining how He works, assigning to Him inconceivable evil and abject cruelty, makes no sense because it is a lie. It is yet another deception from the one that deceives, indeed the real culprit. Man in all his wisdom can be fairly cold hearted and calloused and do unimaginable acts to other human beings, yet somehow and in some way they are willing to consider that maybe that is how God acts at times as well. Human logic attributed to God. That, my friends, is not who God is at all. Most of that stuff you are going through in your mind, for fear of His wicked side coming out, is totally unnecessary. You don’t have to work to make Him love you, He already loves you. Goodness gracious that is who He is. He is love. The endless bullshit you have been engaged with came from a human ignorantly trying to make your flesh spiritual and therefore somehow acceptable to Him. That is not how relationships with Him work. That is not what He wants from you. He desires the kind of love for Him you came up with on your own, not based on any fear or obsessive obligation. Can you begin to see what I’m saying? Maybe it is time to discover Him!

I should close by telling you there is much left for me to discover as well. I dare not conclude that I’ve reached the end of the spiritual discovery road and live each day in blissful nirvana. But, what I can tell you is that what you are looking for so ardently is real and it is found by being willing to discover afresh. Good lord, who convinced us we had to know so much? Just admit you don’t know. Again as the song goes, “you can do better than guess.” “If you’re on a quest, Father knows best, look at what your Bible says…” There is much left to discover in your life, no matter how old you are. Get that heart of a child back and see what you can discover for yourself.

Just some good thoughts…