Because i can hardly see what's in front of me these days (and those days, too).
My iCal is already filling up with things to do. Papers, tests, pages to be read, thoughts to be thought, conversations to have, struggling with God and man and myself. I must confess i am not as excited as the situation merits. I am not as eager to get going as i was two weeks ago. It is hard to say whether i am frightened, angry, or just apathetic. I feel like i have exhausted my emotional reserves in the last six weeks. Orientation started today and the whole time i was wondering if i could really bring myself to do this all again and get involved with another set of beautiful people. People who i will one day have to leave behind.
I am becoming increasingly convinced that i cannot stay here. Not ultimately. I guess i just know, on some inexplicable level of the viscera or pneuma, that i am meant for something other than this. For some place other than here. And so every time i meet someone i think of when i'll have to say goodbye. And it makes me weary because i know i will never find that perfect piece of ground where i can build my house and marry my bride and raise my kids and spend my days growing food. Because i will never have a home here.
And so it is, that the greatest goods in this life can be a torment to us. Because we know when we experience them that if they could only last forever we would be happy. And yet we know that they can't last forever. The summer ends, children grow up and go off to college and work, best friends fall in love and get married, spouses grow old and one day die: we can cling to it all we want but we can never go back to the homes we only have in our memories. Because they were never here and they are not for this time.
When my heart aches for love, when my body longs for sleep after work, when my soul yearns for permanence in a world of vapors and shadows; i am hoping for something i can never attain. Because i need Someone with no horizon, who can carry me off the edge of this world and take me someplace where time doesn't always mean losing and finding, but simply growing and becoming and ceaseless being. God has placed eternity in the heart of man, and then put that man into a world bound up by time so that man would seek Him.
Christ i need you. I need you because i am already weary, and i can't remember not being weary. I see the long years stretching ahead of me, the years of losing sleep, and loved ones, and everything i ever wanted to hold close, and sometimes i just want You to come back so i can finally get some rest, so i can stop striving and failing and finally just be alright. I am not strong enough to do this. I am not strong enough to watch everything fade. So Christ, God, be constant. I am begging You not to abandon me. Because i can feel my own death filling up the years between now and eternity, and i don't so much worry about how my heart stops beating but about all the death i'll have to die before then. So i am asking you again, please be my life. Because there is nothing else that isn't dead and fading.
love,
luke
I am becoming increasingly convinced that i cannot stay here. Not ultimately. I guess i just know, on some inexplicable level of the viscera or pneuma, that i am meant for something other than this. For some place other than here. And so every time i meet someone i think of when i'll have to say goodbye. And it makes me weary because i know i will never find that perfect piece of ground where i can build my house and marry my bride and raise my kids and spend my days growing food. Because i will never have a home here.
And so it is, that the greatest goods in this life can be a torment to us. Because we know when we experience them that if they could only last forever we would be happy. And yet we know that they can't last forever. The summer ends, children grow up and go off to college and work, best friends fall in love and get married, spouses grow old and one day die: we can cling to it all we want but we can never go back to the homes we only have in our memories. Because they were never here and they are not for this time.
When my heart aches for love, when my body longs for sleep after work, when my soul yearns for permanence in a world of vapors and shadows; i am hoping for something i can never attain. Because i need Someone with no horizon, who can carry me off the edge of this world and take me someplace where time doesn't always mean losing and finding, but simply growing and becoming and ceaseless being. God has placed eternity in the heart of man, and then put that man into a world bound up by time so that man would seek Him.
Christ i need you. I need you because i am already weary, and i can't remember not being weary. I see the long years stretching ahead of me, the years of losing sleep, and loved ones, and everything i ever wanted to hold close, and sometimes i just want You to come back so i can finally get some rest, so i can stop striving and failing and finally just be alright. I am not strong enough to do this. I am not strong enough to watch everything fade. So Christ, God, be constant. I am begging You not to abandon me. Because i can feel my own death filling up the years between now and eternity, and i don't so much worry about how my heart stops beating but about all the death i'll have to die before then. So i am asking you again, please be my life. Because there is nothing else that isn't dead and fading.
love,
luke