Saturday, January 30, 2010

How long, how long will I sing this song...

I use to have a Far Side cartoon posted to my dorm room wall back when I was an economics major. A guy is sitting in a class with his hand raised. He says, " May I be excused: my brain is full." That's the way I felt about reading John Keynes's economic theory. It is also the way I feel about the things that God is teaching me lately. I feel like I am absorbing so much, being changed, and waiting for God to show me what he wants to do with this changed me now. It is beginning to feel like I have been sitting on a fart for hours. My little ADD body is coming unglued.

I'm experiencing a kaleidoscope of emotions, and its beginning to feel like waking up each day to a hangover. I feel alive to be so moved by all that God is showing me. But I want to act...to do something, anything...that will make a difference. I'm angry because it seems like God won't tell me what to do. I dream, and then God allows those around me to go and live my dreams. And when I do do something, it seems so incredibly insignificant...like a raindrop on a pond on a very rainy day. I don't know that I even believe that the things I do matter at all in God's economy.

And on top of it all, I'm beginning to hate the church. Well, and at the same time I love the church. But I hate how the church gets so many things wrong....so many things that really matter. I hate how the church cuts off gay and lesbians from God. I hate how the church lets people all over the world live in poverty. I hate how the church likes hanging out as the church but doesn't like going anywhere uncomfortable to be the church. And I hate that all I hate about the church is true of me. GK Chesterton was once asked what is wrong with the church. He replied, "I am!" Right there with you Mr. Chesterton.

I feel the tunes of my college days nesting in my brain. " How long will I sing this song...." My days here on earth are numbered; forty plus years of them have passed never to come back. I don't want to waste my life, and "I still haven't found what I'm looking for...."