From
John 15:1-3
H,
I
get your point about the joy. It was never meant to last in that sense. Here we
get glimpses of it before we roll back into the ‘normal’ blend of tension,
hunger and expectations heightened by our connection to God. It has always been
a bitter-sweet irony that we are made more aware of our hunger when we follow
the narrow path of truth then when we float along the broad way of consolations
unfulfilling. The human body and even the mind can fool itself with constant
winning and pretty faces and a serene life but that old teller, the human
spirit, must always hope endlessly for more.
I
think that this ‘hunger’ does not end because we make a decision to go straight
and narrow. It begins to expand as if it knows that there is now more and much
more to fill it. The conversion experience is just the start. The process from
hungry soul to fulfilled being is fore-shadowed in the early joy but then there
is all this pruning going on, a de-evolution if you will, and this will take a
lifetime of setbacks, corrections, close shaves and maybe some self declared
exiles.
The
constant thing about our walk and dance is that we stay connected. Hope, faith
and love are all around us. We have access through prayer, illumination through
the word and companionship through the spirit in our hearts and the community
of the church as living force. It is not just a feeling though we get the
feeling of it, for that keeps us hoping, from time to time. When that feeling
is missing we look up in faith that nothing has changed and when our strength
has failed us and we cannot look up anymore then we recall His love that does
not cease and let ourselves fall back into this first principle.