~*~
…i was finally realizing that this hopeless and lonely search for Genuine Love and True Peace was not hopeless…and by no means lonely. God had already placed a few, and was introducing more, people into my life that sought out this Huge Life-Altering Creator…that was Real and Intimate and Full of Love, True Grace (something we can not fully fathom), and Lovely Never-ending Mercies. it was such a comfort to find that as i wondered deeper into my Maker that all around me i found True Community instead of more of the overwhelming journey in which i thought i had started out….
and it only got better. so much better.
oh, and the last excerpt from yancey. that, is why i write. oh so good.
~*~
july 8, 2006:
i’m reading soul survivor by philip yancey right now. and it’s amazing…riveting…and seriously life altering. he speaks of what my heart has been missing. real faith. faith that sets hearts on fire and leads to intimacy with God that is not normal in sunday morning worship …yancey’s words swell into my mind and dance around deeply and slowly until i can take them all in and find a place for them. and when i do, i find myself pushing away a distorted way i looked at life before like an old text book.
…as chesterton said ‘i am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before.’ i’ve been hiking out of this canyon…and every step seems more impossible than the last, but i look around and realize that i’m not carving out this path… others have gone before me and some go with me now, hearts that know there is more to life, and that Christianity is about coming alive in God. when yancey discovered this mystery he put it like this: although separated from me by a vast expanse of sea and culture, they kindled hope that somewhere christians existed who loosed rather than restrained their minds, who combined sophisticated taste with a humility that did not demean others, and, above all, who experienced life with God as a source of joy and not repression. i am not alone, i am no pioneer searching for something unknown. it’s there. it’s been there for thousands of years. that hunger, that revolutionary way of loving God and people has been with us since Jesus left his footprints on the waves. i just need to find it, within my heart. i must search, and fight. because something so powerful will be opposed, by people and by an enemy that knows me well.
well, i started writing this to just put an excerpt from the book that i identified with, and then i guess i just got a little excited. but it’s about why yancey decided to write…
i felt drawn to writing because for me it had opened up chinks of light that became a window to another world…i felt the power that allows one human mind to penetrate another with no intermediary but a piece of flattened wood pulp. i saw that writing could seep into crevices, bringing spiritual oxygen to people trapped in air-tight boxes. …and alone in my room, controlling every turn of the page, i met other representatives of faith-c.s. lewis, g.k. chesterton, john donne-whose calmer voices traversed time to convince me that somewhere christians lived who knew grace as well as law, love as well as judgment, reason as well as passion. i became a writer because of my own encounter with the power of words, and i gained hope that spoiled words, their original meaning wrung out, could be reclaimed
i have nothing to say that matches that… it just made my soul dance, i met a kindred spirit. like someone caught my drift, and said it way better than i could.
but go pick up the book. it’s amazing.
