Desperately Quiet

Henry David Thoreau once wrote, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." If I had a nickle for everytime I have heard this quoted or read it written, I would be a very rich man. I sat in Church this evening and saw those words crawl across the bottom of the screen during a PowerPoint Presentation, and for some reason, I was struck. I couldn't shake the words, I couldn't focus on anything but these common, friendly words turned razor sharp dagger. I had to leave the sanctuary and come to my office to unpack it. I think that in the process, I have uncovered my problem, I have uncovered why I spend so much of my life on the spiritual antihistamine that I wrote about last. I live in quiet desperation.

The irony in this, is that the desperation is the good part. Most would argue that desperation is bad, weak, selfish... I would contend that we could all be a little more desperate. I take that back. I think we are all way more desperate than we let on, I think that we could all stand to be much less quiet about our desperation.

To date, my life has been marked by selfushness and slavery to every want of my flesh. I have the scars to prove it. I could write volumes on the pain and danger of selfishness. I would like to think that I have gotten past that. I would like to stand here today and tell you that I am desperate for life healing power of Christ to pour through the world and flood every single corner of the globe bringing hope, healing, power, forgiveness and restortation, and think that at the very core of my soul, I do want that and want it desperately. The problem is, there is a lot of flesh between my soul and my hands, and the desperation gets dilluted with each layer.

I am quietly desperate because I fear what desperation will look like to a cynical world. Ouch. It sounds worse spoken than it did floating about in my head. There is that selfishness again. What will others think of me if I am loudly desperate? What if I live a life of loud desperation, and the world around me thinks I am crazy? So I keep it quiet.

If there is hope for this generation, for Abby and Carson's generation and for generations beyond that, we have to be desperate to see the will of God lived out everyday, everywhere. We have to realize that self leads to death, and that in our own power, self is unavoidable. We have to get desperate for our Lord, for the Spirit controlled life. That's right, Spirit controlled. I know it isn't as neat a book title as the other of nearly the same name, but if I am Spirit filled and Aaron controlled, what good is that, right? We need to be desperate to hand over the reigns.

What does that look like? I can't tell you that 'cause I ain't you. I can tell you for me it means to pour my life into telling people, especially young people, that there is more. I can tell you that for me it means giving, meeting needs, loving, crying at injustice and death, loving sinners and hating the sin that kills them. For me, it looks like speaking out against the complaceny that is killing our faith and our friends along with it. For me it looks like screaming, not vocally, but with every step I take and every thing I do, that there is more, there is hope, there is Christ.

I hope that my desperation becomes much less quiet. I hope I can live by the words of another of my heros, "But my life is worth nothing unless I use it for doing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus--the work of telling others the Good News about God's wonderful kindness and love." (Paul, Acts 20:24)