I am not sure if it is just me or if you have been feeling the same as I. Things seem strangely unfamiliar to me and have for quite some time. Just when I think that is going to change it seems something else happens and the familiarity I thought was within my grasp stops short. Even things that should "feel" familiar don't. I wish I could say this has been a recent thing, but to be honest it began over two years ago and rather than subsiding with time it seems that time has only increased this uncomfortable feeling and sense of not belonging.
The other day I thought about TV shows I watched as a kid. For me there was the Lucy Show, the Flintstones, the Price Is Right (has there ever been a time that show wasn't on TV?) and others that came on at the same time. Did you feel somehow that all was right with the world as long as you got to watch "your" show? I know I did. I think watching the shows was more about a sense of continuity, an inner strength that was drawn, however unnoticed, from the fact that no matter what catastrophe was going on in the world, or even closer to home, the TV show was a familiar place, like the familiarity one feels when they turn the corner and see the name of their street on the sign. Even the music to the evening news can create the same sense of familiarity and comfort or the sound of a lawn mower, just because it is a sound we have heard all our life. Hopefully you're following me on this.
Back about a year ago as things were changing with the economy and other areas of life that we grow accustom to over time, one of the things I believe God wants to develop in us, is for Him to be our familiar place, our place of comfort and safety, our place of continuity on a daily basis. That the familiarity of being with Him will be where we draw our inner strength from. The truth is, nothing is forever except Him. No matter what it is that brings us that sense of belonging, or comfort or that feeling that the world is as it should be, the world around us is changing , and much in ways we have no control over. We can however control what we choose to cling to and allow to be our safe place. I don't know about you, but I am learning more and more that Jesus is who I need to cling to and needs to be what makes the world for me "as it should be".
The Word refers to believers as strangers and pilgrims on earth (Hebrews 11:13), and I have over the years witnessed an increased sense of not belonging here but even more so the past few months. Years ago we used to sing a song that had the following verse:
This world is not my home I'm just passing through
my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue
the angels beckon me from Heaven's open door
and I can't feel at home in this world anymore.
As a young Christian I hardly understood the sentiment with which the above verse was penned. While my eyes had been opened to a whole other world beyond the one in which I live on earth, the reality of its existence has been ongoing. Back then I couldn't imagine coming to a place where the reality of Gods kingdom and heaven as my home would surpass the touchy feely "real" existence of my life on earth, but as my perception of God has changed, so has my reality.
March 23, 2011
March 23, 2011
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