Further seeking

Further seeking

 Growing older for all of its drawbacks which I suppose are many, are in the long run worth it.   For with age comes experience, much of it painful, all of it useful, if something taken or learned from the many experiences that life offers us.  Life is after all a journey, which is what being a pilgrim means, we are on a road going somewhere, which is good news, the bad news is what we all must go through in order to arrive.  Yes for all of us, the rich, poor, the beautiful and not so attractive, the intelligent and those less so……in the end, simply must live life; which cannot be escaped, though perhaps it is tried, with often disastrous results.

 What is our purpose? Is it to get rich, or to become powerful, to always look young and beautiful, or perhaps handsome, to be always on top, ruling it over others?  If you watch TV a lot, the answer is of course yes.   In actually living however the answer is probably no to the above, because when such things are achieved, there is often something deeper that rises to the surface.   This can lead to further seeking, or to a mindless diving further in to the illusion of false expectations that our desires promise us. Until we are free, for most a life time endeavor, at least it is for me, I guess we are slaves. Chained, imprisoned in cells, some larger than others, others more comfortable, yet in the end, they are the same; cells.

 We can spend life running in circles, going nowhere fast, or perhaps start moving to that point that we are all traveling towards, the dark doorway, death, our end, at least as far as this world goes, in a conscious manner.   To see our end can cause a re-evaluation of our lives, to see what is truly important, and what is secondary or perhaps even lower on our ladder of what is truly important.

 Today many believe in nothing beyond this world, so they must find these values within a certain time frame, yet it is important for them, as well as for those who believe that we have continued existence after this life.   We are made for meaning, we crave it, seek it, dig deep for it.  If not then our lives could be spent in running from the reality of our own temporality, in a word death.   Perhaps much of what is wrong in the world is the not facing up to such a reality.

 I am just starting to understand, after all these years that life is about something.   We are sought after, loved, valued more than we can ever imagine by the transcendent, by God, as a Christian it is Christ Jesus who reveals that reality to me.   I think we are made for just that, love, all the rest is window dressing, perhaps seeking love, or making up for the lack of it in our lives.   We live in a short lived universe, our lives over in a flash.   All one has to do is to go over their lives, and see how fast the years pile up, how rapidly each of us moves to the head of the line, the generation before us quickly moving on to whatever awaits us.This can be freeing or something that can fill one with terror, perhaps both, for we are complex creatures and can have more than one emotion or feeling about things.  Lately I have been struck by the phrase “flowers of the field’, for that is in fact what we are, best to embrace that and get on with our lives.

 Yes love is what we seek.  Our movies, books, music drowns in this, the seeking after that which gives life it meaning, color, depth.  People die when it is missing, destroy themselves when lost, yes no amount of wealth, beauty, or pleasure can takes it’s place, though in trying things can get both desperate and self destructive. God is love, we are made in God’s image, so yes, we seek love, it is our nature, our destiny, what we long and hope for.  All else while important is nothing compared to this.