"BUT SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS AND ALL THESE THINGS WILL BE ADDED TO YOU." -Jesus Christ (Mat 6:33)
All of us must come to you. -Psalm 65:2b
When was the last time you went to the Lord?
I don't mean when was the last time you prayed. Prayer can so easily become a thing we do with our feelings, a mechanism of self-soothing. You know atheists pray, right? They find it therapeutic. It is, isn't it? It's therapeutically helpful to internally vocalize my frustrations and my desires.
When was the last time you went to the Lord?
I don't mean when the was the last time you read your Bible. Bible reading can so easily be a thing we do with just our minds. It can be a thing-to-do and feel better about ourselves. For people who enjoy reading, it's easy to read the Bible and find a new fact or a turn of phrase that's interesting. For people who don't enjoy reading, it's easy to read the Bible and feel extra good about yourself: look what I did! It can be self validating in so many ways to read the Bible.
When was the last time you went to the Lord?
I don't mean when was the last time you went to church. People attend church for a variety of reasons and only a handful of them have anything to do with the God of the Bible. Some go because it's a habit and makes them feel good the way all habits do. Some go because they feel validated, like when they eat a salad instead of a cheeseburger. Some go because they're hoping to bump up their point total on that great scoreboard in the sky. Some go to do penance for things they did last week. Some go because they have a neurotic fixation on ecclesial perfections--a nice church service is like pleasant (and cheap) theater. There are many reasons to go to church. Not most of them are to come to the Lord.
When was the last time you went to the Lord?
All of us must come to the Lord. You must come to the Lord. I must come to the Lord. We must all come to the Lord.
All of us must come to Him. I must, with my self, arrive before the Lord. Sure, He comes to us, etc., etc. But listen: you must go to Him. You must take yourself and present yourself to the Lord, be present to Him. (I find this challenging. I recently read someone who said that we know God always shows up when we pray, so the question is whether we show up when we pray!)
All of us must come to the Lord. The Lord is not an idea. The Lord is not a belief. The Lord is not an object. The Lord is not a slogan. The Lord is a person. The Lord is a person waiting for persons to come.
All of must come to the Lord. We can avoid that encounter. We can dance around it with religious tomfoolery. We can blah it away with television and podcasts and music and social media. We can just miss it with memorized prayers and lists of requests and religious To-Do's. We can see the Lord out of the corner of our eye, and see that He sees us, and hope that being near is enough. But it isn't. We must come to the Lord. What you want is there. What I need is there. There is no replacement for it. There is no escaping it, though there is much avoiding of it.
But why avoid it? All of us must come to the Lord. And we want to. We need to. We miss Him. Sure He comes to us--and thank God He does! But we must go to Him too. We must present ourselves to Him. We must step out of the shrubbery and be present and be known.
All of us must come to the Lord. I hope you will, for a little bit, today. (Hey! I hope I will too!) I won't say don't be afraid. Fear is part of it. But there's something much better beyond, isn't there?
Unrelated Extra Links:
When You Say Nothing At All: Here are a few highlights, where the author gives voice to things I try to keep in mind for myself.
"Am I speaking on matters upon which I do not have special knowledge and for which no one needs my opinion?" "Brothers and sisters, it’s OK to have an unarticulated thought. It’s OK to go about our lives in quiet worship and obedience."
The whole article is worth a read, just for the questions he asks.
Photo by Daniel von Appen on Unsplash
