gracealone
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- Apr 5, 2007
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INDY,
Please forgive my indecisiveness about ending our discussion. To be truthful with you. It's a very hard thing for me to come into these discussions. I'm not a brilliant, educated person. I'm a high school graduate, so it's very challenging for me to engage in discussions with folk like yourself. Even intimidating, but nonetheless here I am, back again.. drawn into this thread because I guess I've started to really care about you and want to know where you've decided to plant your feet. I see from your answer to Cirada, that you've dug your heals rather firmly into yourself. I couldn't help noticing how you used the word "feeling" as part of your incentive to stay on your present course. Then you said, "if this life is the only one I get", so there is obviously some measure of doubt left over concerning this idea that perhaps it's not. So the very thing that you accuse me of - choosing to believe something while still having that niggling doubt arise from time to time that can also intrude upon your faith in yourself. So we are more alike than different than I had originally thought. I say, "faith in yourself" because you now believe that the only one you are accountable to now is yourself. (at least that's what you hope.. right as you cannot really prove it to be true.)
I've also thought many times about this - maybe I'm all there's meant to be philosphy of life so the only place I'll really find fulfillment is within myself. But when I start down that path, I find it far too suffocating and limiting. When I begin to look outward beyond the limits of my flesh I see God. In seeing Him I see limitless possibilities, limitless love, limitless life.
My cat died last year. He was 17 years old. He had a stroke and couldn't walk anymore. I watched his reaction to it. Absolutely no fear there, if I twitched a bit of string in front of him he played with it like always, if I petted him he purred, as always. If I carried him outside, he ate grass, as always. I envied him for his undisturbed attitude about his condition. I wondered why I was so afraid of this thing called death while he wasn't. Then I realized that I had been given a knowledge that Death was the enemy that he hadn't been given. To me it was some horrible twisted thing that had invaded my existence and everything in me hated it and fought against it. It was as Lewis said. I was "like a fish who is constantly being surprised by the wetness of the water". If this life is meant to end in nothingness, then why was I so terrified of that end? I believe it's because, "God has planted eternity in the hearts of men." Everytime I speak to another human being I believe I am speaking to an immortal soul. (That makes you very special to me). So I do choose to believe in something outside of myself, but the something is a someone and that someone, Christ, provides for me a way out of the suffocating nature of my own flesh. He came to get underneath all this ugliness, nailed it the cross, and in doing so made a way for me to be lifted up outside of my sin and it's consequences, death, and be swept up into Himself, into eternity which is where I really - and (if you will allow me to say it), "feel" deep down inside that I belong.
I did write a poem once about the suffocating feelings that this idea of autonomy or self rule, stirred up in me. I'll send it along in a seperate post as I have to look it up.., in case you want to read it.( I don't memorize my poetry.) It's a real short poem.
Again, please forgive me for saying "last post"... "no really last post".. I'm not going to make that mistake again.
I have great respect for you my friend, and I will continue to lift you up to the Lord that He will cause you to one day see Him with new eyes. I hope in some small measure you have been able to see Him in me. If so blessed be HE!!!
With Sincerity,
Gracealone
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