Pretend

I almost changed my blog template, but at the last minute couldn't get myself to do it. I'm not sure why. I mean I haven't posted anything in ages and almost as seldom have I written anything that wasn't assigned. I hope to change that though; I really would like to begin blogging again even semi regularly, but no promises. So anyway, regarding the template, I find myself attached to the picture of the empty road that bends into the unknown; I am of course still on this journey and it continues to provide me with plenty of surprises...

Today I was reading the book of Isaiah and I came across some interesting passages that I thought I wanted to remember which is what has prompted me to blog. The first of such scriptures is found in chapter 42, beginning in verse 16 it reads,

"I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth..."

What powerful imagery.

Often I respond obstinately when I have to learn something new (at least when the new direction implies my old way was insufficient). And what about a blind person who has had their sight restored? How radical that change must be. I once watched a documentary about one such case where a blind person upon having their sight restored (she was not blind from birth), had to, in a real way "relearn" to function with her revived modality. Such persons tend to find their walking, moving and balance being affected and they find their newly realized sight to be cognitively overwhelming; talk about an acid trip.

I too have been relearning to see again, a process I anticipate perpetuating for a very long time. And it has been difficult to say the least. I have in effect left the faith of my youth because there was nothing in it worth keeping. Thus for the last two years or so I have been walking through all new terrain, with new instruments that feel clumsy in my hands and new guides (who's voices I don't always recognize). I have been trying to catch new wine but often finding remnants of my old wineskin that are just not fit for the job. Following a downpour, I show up to the Father with a dribbling old decantur and a few droplets of liquid. In light of such shortcomings, I find myself tempted to run back to what was once so familiar and comfortable to me, and I grumble about how things were 'once upon a time' better and wonder why I was ever led out, led out of Egypt. Was I led out in the desert to die? I often wonder...

It is likely that most folks will be able relate to something of this sort, since change is all around us. Often we have to readjust to our surroundings, to new methods and the like and I don't know what your journey is about or what changes have entered your neighborhood. I don't think that all such change is inherently good (nor is it itself bad) and so perhaps your discomfort is some indication that you should return home because the way you're headed is a dead end; but I don't know your story. I do know that on better days I have been convinced that my new found journey is the better way (even though it seems often so straight and narrow) and that there really is nothing left for me in the past but a great deal of immaturity and selfishness. On worse days I feel not up to the task, as if I was called to it by mistake, as if I do not quite belong. But I guess that is the point. I am in fact an impostor, left to myself. I feel humbled at the moment which has been happening quite often lately and I realize at least for the moment, that I have been brought to the desert not to perish but to be tested and humbled just as those who have gone before me (Deuteronomy 8:16).

I hope and pray for patience during the tumult native to this stage of the journey both in my life as well as in my dealings with others who may also be learning how to see for the first time.