Early in my faith walk I wanted to visit Bali or Fiji or Tahiti and stay in one of those bungalows hovering above the ocean’s cobalt ink. I wanted to rest peacefully under the sparking glints of sunlight that would later be punctuated by a silver moon dangling from a string so close you could touch its rough skin.
Okay, fair enough. But there was more to that picture than those alluring components.
The root that dreamed that picture into a dream on a list was something very different. It sprang from the notion that sitting on a beach in this exotic movie-set fantasy would somehow vanquish my pounding angst and calm my restive heart.
This story thread came to me yesterday while I was talking with a dear friend about the prospect of ditching our “smartphone shackles” for a momentary break from life’s pressure-pumping power plant.
But after about 36 seconds we both, in near unison, blurted out an almost-identical line: IT WILL NOT WORK!
We agreed that after a day or two we would want to come home. That today the escape dream is Bali but tomorrow it will be a promotion followed by a new car and then the erasure of pain emanating from a disintegrating relationship.
Chasing this form of mythical happiness comes from the “when I have this or that, I will be happy” worldview. But if we’re not happy now, we won’t be happy later because the need never stops demanding more.
I definitely want to go to Bali someday, but it will be to marvel at God’s majesty…NOTHING MORE.
HOW ABOUT YOU? What is your Bali?
I ask God to help me subordinate my selfish EXPECTATIONS of what I want and, instead, concentrate on being EXPECTANT of what he wants to do in my life.
“And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 4:4
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