Settling for normal

What a fantastic week.  Saturday began with a bible study, that gave me a great new perspective while reordering my priorities.  The following day before and during church, I realized a desire in myself to be more wholly surrendered to God and my need for greater sacrifice.  Then Monday came and I had an amazing conversation with my spiritual director who helped point me further along this path that had begun on Saturday.  This all culminated on Wednesday afternoon as I sat in the quiet library of the Jesuit center overlooking the front lawn.  In the stillness, I could feel God's presence as He sat with me and spoke words of love.  It has left me with a joy that is inexpressible and at the same time must be expressed.  It wells deep within me and is in my very soul, burning to come forth.  If I tried to contain it, I would cause detriment to myself, so it must pour out of me unto others.  This joy has taken me completely as Jeremiah says, "A fire in my bones."  It must not and cannot stay locked within me for fear that if it does, it shall consume me completely or rather be squelched within me bringing none of the fruit that it was meant to bring.  For if I do not share it, it will surely subside and I will have to settle for normal.

It is a curious thing that we do as humans and Americans in particular.  We have the imprint of God written on our hearts.  The creation around us sings of His glory and yet we settle for satisfaction from temporary things.  Our soul cravings cry out for the eternal so we give it that which is finite.  I know I've done it plenty of times.  I've settled for things that do not satisfy and leave me with a hunger for something more.  It is as though my soul is starving and so I give it a teaspoon of sugar hoping to satisfy.  We were born for more than this.  We born for the joy that wells deep within us that comes bursting forth leaving us completely transformed.

I think that which grieves the Lord's heart is when we settle for good things, when we were meant for far greater things.  When was it that we stopped dreaming?  When did we accept the world around us and settle for being normal?  When did those dreams of changing the world, of making a difference, when did these fade?  Whatever your opinion of Lawrence of Arabia, I think his quote here is applicable, "Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity:  but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible."  Os Guinness took this further and said, "Dreamers of the day respond to the gap between vision and reality by closing it."  So I say again, why have we stopped dreaming?  Why have we settled for normal when joy that springs from eternity has been given freely to us.  Instead of looking around us and saying, "woe is us look at we must deal with", we must look around us and say, "blessed are we, that we may be instruments of change and thus be given the high calling of sharing in God's work in this world."  May we challenge the status quo, may we be the change we want to see in the world, may we not settle for normal.