Pensées de Nát

(Apologies to Monsieur Pascal.)

Pursuing God results in finding him. However, we often don’t see the fruit (a) that we expect to see or (b) when we expect to see it. We pursue God because we want to see his kingdom come. The fruit of our pursuit of God is love for God and love for others. It’s not always a clear nugget of wisdom, or warm fuzzies, or clarity of life-path or career-path, or more money, or more happiness, or less stress, or no pain & suffering, or a guarantee of a simple, worry-free life. It results in a sacrifice of oneself for the sake of others and for the sake of God.

I do not know what my family and I will be doing a year from now – where we will be living, what our vocations will be, what life-trajectory we will be pursuing. I do know that God our Father holds our future and that we are to direct our hope and trust in his direction.

I want to pursue God with my family, not just by myself. I want to pursue God with those in my faith community, not just by myself. I want to encourage others in my faith community to do the same.

I have a responsibility to pursue other people. That's not just because I am a minister by vocation; that’s part of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is where God’s values are of utmost importance. Those in his kingdom value the things that he values. They will be our defaults:

- love
- reconciliation
- the pursuit of people
- giving to those in need
- looking to meet others’ needs before our own

“The sacrifice you want is a broken spirit; a broken and repentant heart, O God, you will not despise.” Psalm 51:17

The world is full of brokenness. People don’t really know that it’s full of brokenness. Actually, that’s not right; they do know, only they don’t know that they know. They recognize that the world is not fair, that not everything goes their way (though sometimes it does), and that they often feel unfulfilled by life, but they wouldn’t necessarily call the world broken. I am a follower of Christ and I still feel unfulfilled by life in a lot of ways. I don’t like that things don’t go my way, and I like when they do. Sacrifice is hard, but it is necessary. If we are to pursue and live the path of Christ, we must learn to sacrifice. Actually, we must sacrifice even before we learn to.

You know when you’re trying to think of someone’s name or something and you say, “Oh, it’s right on the tip of my tongue!”? That’s how the world is, i think. They are sitting there trying to articulate what they think they need, and what they think is “right”, and they are so close. I hear this in phrases like, “Everything happens for a reason” and in their pursuits to “be a good person”, or in their adulation of those who display selflessness and sacrifice and other similar qualities while most of the people they know do not. I wish they could know Christ and see his Body live out his mission, because then what they’re looking for would go from tip-of-tongue directly to total recognition.

I pray that the desire of my family and my community would be to live out the mission of God, to see his kingdom of love and grace and peace and light brought into the world.