Yeah, Evan’s in another one of his moods. For one thing, I’m listening to this song on continuous repeat. The words are pretty meaningless, but the music pretty much sums it up right now.
Disconnection. Removal. Exile. Dis… um, not-belonging. That’s pretty much how it is right now.
Okay, so maybe this little bout of semi-depressed philosophising was brought on by a combination of no one showing up for the planned argument and the PalaDen being all out of orange juice. Sue me. I’ve actually been toying with this idea since Saturday, and getting the proverbial stubbed toe just amplified it a bit…
Anyway, the idea is simple: I want to go Home. Not Charleston-home, I mean Home. As in… eh, let me call C. S. Lewis here:
<p>If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.</p>
I had that hit me while I was doing some preliminary Christmas shopping. What better place to feel out-of-place than a place commonly known as a hang-out point for high school kids? There’s everyone, spending their money like wild, laughing it up with other people in their little cliques, waiting for the one with the car to say it’s time to go. Then there’s me, alone, drove myself, in college, not spending anything (and I didn’t!). Yeah, it sounds a little depressing, maybe a little lonely, but bear with me for a second.
When we become Christians, we are drastically and permanently changed on the inside so much so that we become something other than mere humans. (Some would argue that we become fully human, I would say they are right as well. I’m purposfully being a little fanciful/sci-fi-ish/mystical/dramatic; it gets my imagination going. And my imagination is on right now.) This point is best illustrated by George MacDonald’s book At the Back Of the North Wind. In it, a little boy meets the North Wind and travels — you guessed it — to the back of the North Wind. From that point on, he acts slightly odd at times, but it’s always explained away by saying he had been to the back of the North Wind. In other words, he had caught a glimpse of Heaven. And from that point on, everything he did in life reflected that.
So what happens when we become Christians? We catch a glimpse of Heaven. We get our own bit of Joy. (Lewis actually described his longing for Heaven as Joy… maybe so…) And there are always times when we want more. For me, now is one of those times.
But, since I’m still here, there’s obviously a reason. It’s not my place to figure out what that reason is, either. I just have to trust that God knows what he’s doing. And He does. And I do.
