insidious

the start of this year, I couldn't feel closer. I sympathized though that is as much as I could feel. God was more powerful, more present, more real than ever. Being constantly inundated in a community with thoughts of god, life and religion was easy enough as I chose it to be. Then came summer and all the support that I had faire construire around me was away. I knew I could not depend on people to always guide me along and feed me thoughts. So I chose to flood myself with the Words of God. Reading and reading, bible and christian books. Some times, it seemed like I was committed and obeying his words, or at least trying to. Other times, I let sin overtake me and rebelled within and beyond me. I wanted it to be on an island- God and I. Isolation does not generate lovingness. It was no Mary but self-fishness- the eagerness to just break away, escape from the torment and the call to love. An easy excuse to bask in God's love. I hung on to this concept. So convinced was I that I remember saying that the worst thing that can happen to me is to be away from God.

Come fall and my house of cards blew away. I've been reading the OT and it's been as dry as ever. Sometimes, I don't actually care that much for what the priest wore or how many cubits the temple was built. The slow invasion and I let it be. Has school work crept on me? Is that what it is? The sun rose and set. The dark was all that was left. I've spent far too much time and effort on things that I know don't matter to me. I claim they don't in my values, but my actions show otherwise. Head and heart misaligned. To glorify God in my studies. What talks were they? School was never a reason for education but perhaps it has become. My friends are all pursuing as best as they can. Good grades, good jobs and the good life. I wanted to go to China for exchange. To witness and to perhaps be a witness. But now that's not happening. At least not next fall. Everyone seems to have figured out everything. I am in the vague direction of wanting to plan for a cause. Some sort of social reason: housing for the poor, development for rural community. Whatever. I don't know.

Sometimes, I really don't know if I can stop being a hypocrite. Or just being doubtful about this whole deal. It's not that I don't enjoy helping out with worship or singing praises to God, it's just that sometimes, I think it's really not my thing. There are so many more people who are qualified for it, so many more who have a passion for it, and many more who can actually sing and mean all the lyrics. Is it time to step away? And to the people that I had been trying to reach to, was God really using me to speak to them? How can I tell them that God loves them and we only have to let God love us back when I myself don't surrender everything to God?

I haven't made time for anything. Reading in waterloo park and sinking into the nature to reflect on God's words and works was great but now seems so distant. It is a similar case for people. I have numbed and disdained myself and those whom I care about from eternally important things. In the past, I would say I tried and my heart broke for those knew but didn't know God. Reading A Grief Observed, it occured to me it might be exactly what C. S. Lewis wrote about.
"If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been
so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came. It has been an imaginary faith playing with innocuous counters labelled 'Illness,' 'Pain', 'Death' and 'Loneliness.' I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. now it matters, and I find I didn't...God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down. "

Does God mean to me as much as I say it does? How could I have loved God in the past yet not love him now? Love cannot be inconsistent. The logic that follows would be that I have never loved Him. Either that, or I have stopped loving Him.

It would be awful if the former was true. That would invalidate and falsify my faith. It might also mean that I'm doomed for hell and whatever that means to me- it's not as if I'm living life any different from an opium addict, who knows their impending death. There is more comfort in the latter, though that is dangerous and miserable too. I, might have depended, trusted and loved Him because of the sufferings and hardships of people around me. I had no choice, so I did so. When that or the people depart from me and I from them, there is nothing to bind me to God and so I love Him less than full and made them suffer the pain in vain. The stakes are even higher because he says to love Him with all our heart, soul and mind. No holding back. I can't be loving him half-hearted. That would discount every atom of love.

There could be many reasons for my present state. Reading portions of the bible that doesn't speak to me. Second year cell location too far from home, too late too cold. Work. Not caring much for studio project but still spending all my time in it because it is a team effort and I don't want my friends to be left with all the work while I go do my own stuff. Besides, they know I'm a Christian. Afterall, what would they think of me and of Christians if I went off for dg instead of helping them when they needed me at the critical moments? So justifiable.

Now I see. It is not school, stress, places or people that have brought me away. It is me. Myself. My sinful nature.

Not praying when I need to. Not delving deeper when I don't get it. Not asking, not seeking. Not wanting to talk about it because I know people have their own burdens and I don't want to be make them feel down or worried about me. I know some people don't mind but maybe I didn't know it myself. Maybe I did know it at the back of my head, but just didn't bring myself to identify the symptoms till now. I don't want to depend on others because I know that ultimately, I am responsible for my own spiritual walk. But yes, I let it slip in, slowly but surely.

This post is really pessimistic. I'm sorry and I hope it doesn't discourage anyone but it's really for my own reflection. While I struggle on, I know God delights in a broken and contrite heart.

Repent, surrender, rest, love. Lord reign in me.