stand

Wrote this in flight to Korea. Sorry for the lateness. Just now dug it up…

Stand forth, O soul.

That's what Tertullian wrote, and I like it. It's better than the slouching, the sliding back, that my soul is so prone to do.

I'm sitting on the plane to Korea. We are nearly 40,000 feet in the air and only (yes, only) 2,292 miles away from Incheon airport. (That's a fraction of the number we started with. Phew.) Having so many hours as empty space for contemplating, I have kept myself shallow. I haven't wanted to think. So I have drowned out the silence.

By watching movies.

Yes, "drowning silence" sounds dramatic—but watching chick flicks can be very dramatic (life and death, even?) when its a method of shirking God.

After all, isn't that essentially why drugs are bad? Why alcoholism is bad?

Isn't the root of every bad thing that it is a shirking from God?

A shirking from reality?

A shirking from giving Him the proper worship?

Every evil thing I have done has been in the act of running away. And everything I grab as a duck-and-cover from God is corrupted by my hiding.

What pulls me back, besides the simple fact of raw time that I cannot manage to fill with any more distraction? Psalm 42 has followed me around this week:

"My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God?"

It is a living God we thirst for. I don't know how your mind works, but mine is rather shady. Instead of admitting that I have shirked God, I pretend that we're still speaking. I read my Bible, the same as any old day; I pray, as any old day. Forget that the god I worship in that moment is not the living Most High, but the god of my own piousness.  

Stand forth, O soul. Your thirst is for a God who lives—and not just in the static of your mind; a God who is wholly outside of you, who owns you. You are thirsty for Him. You need Him. He is the wholly Other, not in your power to control.

"Deep calls to deep at the noise of Thy waterfalls; All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me." (Ps. 42:7)

A mysterious verse. What do waterfalls say of God? How does His deep call to our deep?

Simple…but eternally complex. He calls us in. As we know this God, we are brought deep. We are overcome.

We drown. 

And this is beautiful—because drowning in all that He is the very opposite of running. Can we possibly be closer to God than when we are drowning in all that He is? When all that He is overpowers all that we are, we find that all of ourselves, lost, overshadowed, gains more than we could ever search out away from Him.

Stand forth, O soul. God is alive.