Into the ether.

There’s a group I belong to that meets every week. It’s a beautiful thing I would have never thought of joining back in my “people-hating” days when the thought of sharing my heart was akin to that time I randomly got my period on an amusement park log ride in the sixth grade.

At one time, I wouln’t have known which was more horrifying.

But now I know it’s definitely the waterpark thing because sharing your heart is like lifting your burden off your shoulders brick by brick. It’s having all these “You too?” moments that make you feel a little less alien and a whole lot more human.

We live alone on all these tiny islands in our heads, only to look up and find the land bridge.

The other day during our group, we were talking about our knowledge of Scripture. I’ve been accused of knowing the Bible inside and out, which always elicits a “Girl, please!” because what I do know is how much I don’t know. And I’m finally making friends with that feeling.

There are a million Bible scholars out there and a million scholarly books on the subject, some of which can make you feel pretty darn dumb if you forget who Esau was or don’t understand what the word “hermeneutics” means. (Pssst…it has absolutely nothing to do with Herman Munster no matter how much you protest. Learned that one the hard way.)

What I do know is that my relationship with Jesus has nothing to do with my IQ. As Paul said, I can have all the Scriptural knowledge in the world, but if I don’t have love, I am nothing.

If I don’t know my God on a relational level, there’s no point in reading verse after verse.

Just because you know what something means doesn’t mean you know what it means.

If you want to know God, submit your whole life to Him. It’s that easy. Snort. No, I know, that’s not easy at all.

But what is easy? Making millions until there’s nothing left to buy? One-upping your neighbor until you realize your neighbor has died, and guess what, you’re next?

Living a lie until breathing hurts just as much as not breathing?

Maybe we all just stop pretending and understand what this truly is: God waiting for us to wake up. To stop sleeping. To start reaching out our hands to the only hope we have on this earth.

Or maybe we keep scrolling Facebook.

But me? I’ll keep reading the Word and being confounded and loving the truth and hating myself in those small hiccups of deception, and confessing my pain, repenting my sin, and loving the only thing that will get me off this ride and into the ether.

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