It’s become a parlance of our time, the immortal words of the great Emerson “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” There is some dark place in the heart of every person where we decide to live or not to live. There resides within each of our souls a beautiful novel that we can pick up and read or we can ignore. And everybody, each and all, gets to decide what to do. Deciding to embrace this introspective self portrait is choosing to live. Choosing to live means dealing with our own inconsistencies and inability to live our lives the way we know we should. Choosing to not live means to die slowly, in America at least, wrapped up in a culture that can hypnotize and intoxicate for the sum of ones entire life; drunk with hurry, escapism and consumeristic dissatisfaction until we finally slip away into the deep hole of oblivion.
If you look deeply enough into your own heart, you will find that there is within you a great mystery that you cannot begin to explain and you cannot see it all at once. The darkest corners of our character beckon us to stretch our eyelids wide to let in enough light that we might begin to see ourselves for who we really are; embracing our own lives as our one great masterful work of fiction.
We are compelled to begin our journey inward that we might someday know ourselves more fully, and in so doing find the freedom to allow ourselves to become more like the image of God. Embracing this inner mystery allows us the freedom to take part in who we are becoming. This freedom is given by God. In the end this intentionality of living allows us to begin to be that same person all of the time, on purpose; and to make that person the best version of ourselves – the version that begins to resemble our Savior.
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