What He Wants; What People Want; What I Want

I woke this morning and thought about spending time with God, thought about all the people who told me that every day was not enough, that a whole life was not enough – as if they were trying to pay Him back for grace, as if they didn’t know after all the time they spent with Him that they never could.

I woke this morning and thought about getting published, which is happening today, and thought about how much I wanted to share that and be excited about it, but felt myself stepping back from that real excitement because one is not supposed to promote oneself, because people must be getting annoyed with me for only taking pictures, because doesn’t everybody stand off – even just a little – from someone who is successful?

It’s easier if God is just an obligation, a box we can check off our list for the day – or for life. But He doesn’t want to be an obligation, anymore than I do – so He poured His breaking heart out to the prophets, asking for our love for Him, and finally stepped down into our world to show us first how He loves us best. And we talk about His death and let it become a given, except when it reminds us that we somehow need to repay Him for it, except when we look at our small suffering or at the suffering of others and think, “that is what it means to sacrifice ourselves.”

But we don’t really lay down our lives. We don’t really acknowledge Him in all our ways – or I wouldn’t feel so alone today, knowing the good that is coming, feeling bummed about sharing it at all because it’s just not that big a deal, except that I’ve poured my heart into it for my bride, for myself, for the publisher, and God if this is the letdown I feel when I am successful, why should I keep doing what I’m doing?

Watery sunlight filters through yellow-gray humidity, dulling color in a landscape that normally sings brightly with it. I sigh. Determine to shower. Change some diapers – B is going into the bathroom to fill them now, silly boy. P wants to watch TV, but I ask her to use her imagination today. She says she is bored.

I think He wants me here, in this place, living and breathing and working toward excellence, not sitting half on the fence and half off. It’s not payback – it’s a commission, to go out like the stewards and invest the grace I’ve been given, to see what yield He’ll return, as a Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.

I don’t know how diligent I’ve been. I do know I can’t settle for anything less than Him. I never quite thought I’d look as “non-Christian” as I do when I knew Him. I figured I’d be more perfect somehow. Actually punch those time cards with Him I never could punch before.

Instead, I breathe Him in and breathe Him out and He is in me and changing me and making my heart not like the me I used to be. So really, it’s not about me “becoming greater” – it’s about me becoming one with Him, and that is the most beautiful grace, for how does one pay one back for existence, for life itself?

I woke this morning and I was alive.

Today will bring what it does, friends will speak in or they won’t. Success is going to come and go – I’ve seen it happen enough times. It’s just being His that I need today, His in success and in stress and in failure. He is my truest friend and my very great reward, the one who knows me inside and out, who asks me to come to Him with my weary and let Him give me rest. He doesn’t need me to do anything for Him. Doesn’t really even want it.