We wished each other a happy new year, my family and I…. we prayed for the coming year and shared some of our aspirations earlier in the evening. Now, before turning in for the night I am thinking.
I am thinking of how the heaviness of some of what I have read weighs upon my soul. The tsunami victims, the rampant and covered sin among the Amish, the many problems and inequities that seem to flow into sightlines with regularity.
Is my sigh audible? Can you hear my soul sigh? No, but maybe you hear your own. Perhaps.
I will shy away this year from blithe and flippant references to Jesus and His Salvation. I feel my soul shrinking from it… the highminded and irreverent equivalent of pasting tract bandaids.
I don’t want to make it about cute slogans or slaphappy dictums to eat spiritual cake …. not when there is real dearth and starvation for the sustenance of God’s truth.
I feel harsh and severe within. I feel a hatred for evil and a longing for good. My inner eye searches the spiritual horizon. I want the things of God and I want them without the tawdry trappings.
Away with your stink of lightness… your cheap perfumes covering the putrid wounds that refuse to be healed.
I don’t want them this year…. don’t bring it into my sight or before my nostrils…. I am in the mind to sweep it away and back into your face. My determination is to adhere to the real, my desire is for freshness of sweet air to breathe and to saturate in the flow of the fountain of life.
I think my soul is thirsty. I think I am tired of feeding it sugary substitutes for the living waters. I think I will return to the icy cool waters of Mt. Hermon.