Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Looking Ahead

I'm not even going to pretend like I'm a man. I know full well I'm not. I'm a boy with a beard, who yearns for the benefits of a man without the responsibilities. I know myself well enough to know that much, and by the grace of God I know the difference well enough that simple ignorance is not an option.

I also know that He loves me. I know that deeper than anything else I hold in the vast vault of useful/useless knowledge in my inflated frontal lobe. I know that God does love me, and the men that He loves He does not allow to remain infants. Those He justified, He sanctified, and will glorify. It is, unless my love for Christ is mere inflation in and of itself, inevitable that He will chasten and discipline me to become more like Jesus. Whether I go willingly or kicking and screaming is my prerogative. (weird spelling in my opinion)

And if I know myself at all, it will not be all that willingly.

And so, if we do a little theological calculation, there arises an almost certain probability:

God's love, sovereignty, and will + my stubborn rebelliousness = Pain.

I can almost put money on the fact that the next year, if not longer, will be a period of periodically intense, constantly throbbing, self-inflicted pain. I spent several years experiencing physical growing pains, coming a year or two earlier for me than most, having shot from four foot-something to just over six feet tall in two and a half years. And now, my soul has some catching up to do, and I have a feeling it will make physical growing pains feel like a rug burn feels in comparison to a gunshot wound.

But do not mistake this for complaining.

The thought of the probability of incoming pain and discomfort has never been so calming in my life. Occasionally borderline exciting. Not in the way a masochist anticipates their next lashing, but how a fresh recruit anticipates his first day of training, his first deployment, his first battle. You know what pain likely lies ahead and your body often trembles at the thought of what is yet to come. For men of God are called to be soldiers, and the best of their kind. And the training soldiers are called to undergo will test their every fibre. And yet it is the anticipation that through that tribulation you will know the taste of honor, the taste of glory, and that through what others consider Hell you will become something beyond what is currently in your grasp: you will become a man. Your spine develops an iron core, your chest develops a gentle spirit, your mind becomes a razor with which to cut the teeth of the ignorant and foolish, and your whole being stripped of all juvenile ambition and replaced with a dose of reality, molded to a cause of something beyond even yourself.

And so I sit, a fresh-faced recruit. Bright eyed and occasionally ignorant of what lays before me. Pain, discomfort, abandonment, betrayal, scars, casualties, loss, gain, victory, defeat, exhaustion, despair, depression, trauma, struggle, and what keeps the blood flowing is a vision. A vision of things that are yet to come and yet make everything now seem worth it. I see the promise of what lays at the end of the road. I see the face of a loving Father and the joy His purpose will supply with endless measure.

I see the storm coming over the horizon, literally and metaphorically. I know what lies ahead. And in everything, what sustains us is the knowledge of what lays on the other side.

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