What If

I cried myself to sleep last night. My resolution is going to take a little more work, I guess. lol. I woke up this morning, restless still. I needed to clear my head. I prescribed myself a walk.

One of the things I love about Montgomery is the Blount Cultural Park. It's beautiful and scenic and a two-minute drive from where I live. The perfect atmosphere for head clearing, I suppose. They do say that exercise releases chemicals that induce a feeling of well-being. Anyway, I got my juices flowing, became invigorated by the cool (but certainly not cold in these parts) Alabama air, and was amused by dogs jumping into ponds to retrieve frisbees, by kids on tricycles and scooters they probably got for Christmas, by the sounds of ducks and geese whose quacks and honks seemed like laughter, and by snatches of conversations as pairs fast-walked and jogged past me.

After an hour or so, I went to Panera Bread for a caramel latte topped with whipped cream and a strawberry and cream cheese pastry (I didn't say I was exercising to try to lose weight), a newly borrowed Don Miller book in tow called Searching for God Knows What. I thoroughly enjoyed his earlier Blue Like Jazz, and am quickly devouring this one. Anyway, I came across a passage talking about humanity's need for relationship and community:

And that is the thing about life. You go walking along, thinking people are talking a language and exchanging ideas, but the whole time there is this deeper language poeple are really talking, and that language has nothing to do with ethics, fashion, or politics, but what it really has to do with is feeling important and valuable. What if the economy we are really dealing in life, what if the language we are really speaking in life, what if what we really want in life is relational?

Now this changes things quite a bit, because if the gospel of Jesus is just some formula I obey in order to get off the naughty list and put on a nice list, then it doesn't meet the deep need of the human condition, it doesn't interact with the great desire of my soul, and it has nothing to do with the hidden (or rather, obvious) language we are all speaking. But if it is more, if it is a story about humanity falling away from the community that named it, and an attempt to bring humanity back to that community, and if it is more than a series of ideas, but rather speaks directly into this basic human need we are feeling, then the gospel of Jesus is the most relevant message in the history of mankind.

I felt like I was reading something I could have written. I began to wonder if this idea is a part of what is eating me. The realization of my need--relationship, community--that I thought I had already fulfilled. Spiritually, at least.

I think part of the change that needs to happen is physical, as in, where I am locationally, geographically. And I'm working on that one. But, as I've come to realize in other situations, change of scene does not = change of self. Change of self is so much more involved. And I'm still trying to figure that part out.