“There was night for a long time, then suddenly there was day.”
It’s the simplest way I can put it, yet the saddest thing in being cut off from the night is I only ever best connect with those of the day.
Let me explain. Life changed overnight for me nearly 20 years ago, and I was required to let go of that old life, a process that took nine whole months, to welcome a new life.
An integral part of this process was becoming a new creation from the inside out. Yet, it seemed to happen overnight.
Like the comparison of night to day, having tried ardently to live as a Christian for nearly 13 years, yet not getting it, it took the situation of losing everything to gain something I could not ever lose.
The only problem with this lifestyle of living eternally conscious is there are so few I can genuinely connect with. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of people I connect with pastorally, and as a counsellor, but there are so few that connect with the eternal heart.
For me, the eternal heart is the heart of the beatitudes. This is a spirit satisfied in lament, contented with being broken, that resists the carnal urges that woo the covetous and ambitious. The world can’t compete once eternity’s been glimpsed.
How can a person connect with others when they find themselves, and the heart of God, in being defeated? This world hates defeat, but the Christ in us is not estranged to the concept, and somehow we’re humbled in the victory that can’t be defeated when we most willingly don’t fight it.
It is utterly incomprehensible to explain it to others, yet it is the place of eternity in this world. Nobody can speak of this most dichotomous reality where you are no longer afraid of brokenness, of lament, of defeat, of despair. Indeed, meaning and purpose is drawn from these deeper darker places. The eternal mindset is the reversal of the world mindset.
People may wonder how they can overcome anger and bitterness and resentment. Apart from the times I have been triggered in life, on those odd occasions where I am tempted back into the world to covet what I cannot have, I have neither the energy nor the interest in those counterfeit emotions.
I just can’t stay there
where there is no life,
where there is no wisdom,
where there is no truth.
The life beyond the indignation for injustice is a life crushed like Jesus.
And being crushed is bizarrely a catharsis.
It’s a life that has a definite solution for the secondary emotions because the primary emotions are the preferred and really the only default. It’s all that can be.
It is thereby easy to say goodbye to much of what makes us feel out of control. But the problem is, we must accept that we will feel like strangers in this world, aliens roaming a foreign place.
It is a miracle when night turns to day, when death is given up for life, where the worldly temptations pass in preference for the heavenlies, but it is lonely, and therefore sustaining, because in loneliness there is connection with sadness and pain, which are eternal concepts from this world’s perspective.
I don’t really expect anybody to read this and to understand it, which demonstrates my point. But if you too feel most like you’re home when you’re alone, when all is quiet, and there’s nothing to strive for, and you strive most for what this world can’t give you, you know what I mean.
If you feel loneliness renders you to peace, you know what I mean.
If you’re taken to the eternal in your pain, you connect with what I’m saying.
If rejection motivates you, eternity’s your place.
If carnal pleasures annoy you, yes, you really can’t turn back, and you don’t want to.
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