“When we’re not at peace, when we aren’t content, when we aren’t in a good place, our radar gets turned on. We’re looking. Searching. And we’re sensory creatures, so it won’t be long before something, or somebody, catches our attention.
And it always revolves around the ‘if’ doesn’t it?
If I just…
The idea creeps into our head and heart that we are lacking, that we are incomplete, that this craving in front of us is the answer.
The ‘if’ means we have become attached to the idea that we are missing something and that we can be satisfied by whatever it is we have in our sights. There’s a hole, a space, a gap, and we’re on the search. And we may not even realize it. When we are in the right place, the right space - content and at peace - we aren’t on the search, and our radar gets turned off.
Adam and Eve fixate on this one piece of fruit from this one tree when God has given them endless trees with infinite varieties of fruit to enjoy. Which is often our problem. There’s so much to enjoy, and yet we fixate on something we don’t have.
This is why gratitude is so central to the life God made us for. Until we can center ourselves on what we do have, on what God has given us, on the life we do get to live, we’ll constantly be looking for another life. That is why the word remember occurs again and again in the Bible. God commands his people to remember who they are, where they’ve been, what they’ve seen, what’s been done for them. If we stop remembering, we may forget. And that’s when the trouble comes.”
- Rob Bell (Sex God, 73-74)
I am wrestling with this.
