Before I started factoring “how much energy is this going to take?” into the equation, I used to be pretty compulsive about not wanting to miss any good or fun thing life had to offer. I hated feeling like everyone else was “out there” having fun or doing something important, and I wasn’t.
I was the teenager who went bonkers if I didn’t have plans on a weekend. Sure, I could watch TV, hit tennis balls against the garage door, or sit in my room, play my guitar and sing the angst-filled songs of the ’70s (including all six verses of Don McLean’s “American Pie”), but unless I was out with my friends, I felt restless.
While I still have a healthy aversion to feeling sidelined or useless, the simultaneous desire to chill out is definitely more powerful than it used to be. Some of that is age, but I also know God has done much hard work in my heart to teach me to stop demanding so much from this life. That certainly runs counter to our cultural obsession with achievement and fun, but believe me, God needed to rearrange my priorities.
My natural tendency is to focus too much on the gap between the way things are and the way they could be. I want to right what’s wrong, have what’s available, and achieve what’s possible. In proper doses and contexts, that can be good, but it can also breed unhealthy discontentment, ungratefulness, frustration and exhaustion.
On the plus side, God used my “go for the gusto” mindset to bring me to Himself. When I was in college, I had a providential conversation with a friend one evening about heaven and what the Bible actually says about who’s eligible to go there, and it completely and wonderfully changed the course of my life.
There’s certainly no bigger brass ring on this merry-go-round than heaven and once I understood that faith in Christ is the key, I was all in. I confess that initial step was all about me and ignored the truth that Almighty God has every right to require my obedience, devotion, and trust. I just knew I didn’t want to miss heaven (or spend eternity in hell).
I now understand my faith should primarily be motivated by God’s worthiness and glory, not the “benefits package” He offers, but those benefits are pretty great. While heaven was the first and biggest enticement, I also love seeing how the peace of God is conquering territory in my heart once ruled by the tormenting drive to accomplish worldly goals.
St. Augustine famously wrote, “Thou has made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in Thee.”
True, that. I know it because I’ve lived it.
I’ve discovered that true peace isn’t about the absence of problems, but about trusting God so we’re no longer at the mercy of circumstances or frustrated ambitions. It is possible to live peacefully in the chaotic present if we keep our eyes focused on our sovereign God and the perfect future He’s promised to those who are His.
This world truly isn’t our home. God has set eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11) because that’s what we’re created for, and He constantly uses trials, like this current pandemic, to pry our stubborn fingers off this world. Only then are we truly free to take His hand and walk confidently toward the eternal home He’s preparing for His family (John 14:2-3).
We’re told in Psalm 46:10 to “Be still (cease striving) and know that I am God.” When tattoo parlors open up again, maybe I should get that inked on my brain and heart because it, indeed, unlocks so many good things.