EL’s Dribble

I can’t describe how I’m feeling this morning… but it’s that everything is way above my head these days. I never feel like I’m in control anymore. It sounds pretty distressing, but it’s rather liberating. As I read through John with the boys, all I see are verses that talk about how the Holy Spirit just does his thing and you can’t ever predict it. You find Jesus saying one thing [purposefully?] and then doing another. That sounds contradictory… to me it just sounds like you can’t peg him. He’s doing his thing whether you like it or not. He talks about how sickness will lead to glory… but how? I don’t know. He does crazy miracles and no one really knows what to make of it. There’s no explanation.

It just sounds like people are confused – like the human tornado just hit. Yes, that’s a Dolemite reference. Don’t look it up. And at the end, he still demands for it all. And reiterates again and again, that he does it. We don’t do it, he does it.

I wonder sometimes what God is trying to make of me – meaning, I’m a work in progress; but what’s the final product? What will I be like when I’m 40? Or 50? Or 80? What will I be like? And the little things I’m learning each moment is this simple thing that it’s all Jesus. It’s always been Jesus. Jesus does it. He did it in the beginning, why would it change now? The heart of the Gospel is that Jesus came to be with us. We didn’t go to him. He sacrificed his life. We sacrificed nothing. He embraced us. We didn’t embrace him. And when it’s so stark like that… there’s only one response. But to love him more each day.

I want to be one of those guys in their 80’s who reflect on their life and they’ve nothing much to say but, “I just don’t know… but one thing I do know… I was blind, but now I see.” I want to be one of those guys that just says… all I know is that Jesus loves me and it still messes me up. I don’t care to be this expert practitioner. I don’t really need public acclaim [it's not to say I don't have those fleshly dreams]… I just want to be that guy who says that Jesus loves him and he just loves him back.

I sense that God is working out the kinks to be able to arrive at that very destination.

I think I’m relearning the breaking process again. I wish it didn’t cycle back so quickly. And yet I know… I know it’s God’s way of pruning those he loves. No father withholds discipline from the son that he loves.

As a man, pride and fear still course through my veins. There’s some enormous thing in me that still wants to conquer the world and have everyone shower their praises over me. Delight in my brilliance. Rejoice in the gift that is me. And the moment that I find the coat of grandeur fitting so well, it gets ripped off and I find that I’m not wearing much underneath.

Nothing necessarily terrible has happened. But I just feel like I’ve been running head-first into the wall of failure and impotence over and over again. Feeling like a failure and feeling powerless – those are the worst feelings. But it’s said that there’s good brokenness and bad brokenness. Good brokenness is when the element that needs to be broken gets replaced with something life giving. Bad brokenness happens when the element gets broken but is never replaced. It just becomes the wound that we carry and thrust on others through life. We never grow from it, never gets replaced, we continue dying the slow death, never rediscover fresh and new life from the brokenness.

When Jesus says that dying comes before life. I think I’m rediscovering that truth once again. Those parts of me, the pride, the fear, the dreams of my own immortality… must die. And die completely. When he says apart from me you can do nothing, I always want to bend the rule. How about a little something? How about being able to do a little… and then take it to the corner of my house, crouch down and revel in my false brilliance. But no… he says nothing. Apart from Him, I can do nothing. And the nothing is what I’m finding all the more apparent.

Thanks? OK… thanks.