Without You, Lord, I am miserable. Without You as the focus, and the focusing, of my life;
I am lost, and my mind, swirls endlessly.
You give music, dance, and games to enjoy. You give family and friends for company. Yet none of these things can fulfill, without knowing You dwelling in their essence.
After the noise and the fun are all through, there’s an anguish of emptiness that remains; my soul’s hangover from the worldly intoxications of the previous evening.
God, what do we need of you anymore? I hear this asked. We can live quite well on our own they say.
Yet then—what need has meat, of protein? It will still taste as good. And surely chemical bonds don’t make the water more refreshing? Just give those thirsty men glasses of hydrogen and oxygen.
Man, on morphine fails to feel his pain, but the source of the pain hasn’t vanished. If we are now too numb to know our God, does this somehow mean that He is gone?
Is God dead? Or has our perception just grown so very dim? Man is dying, not God.
I’ve sat inside stadiums, filled with promise, excitement and anticipation; filled with noise and colorful lights, the hope of victory, or the magic of art. I’ve heard the thunderous applause, the frenzy and the laughter; and what have I gained from this, what have I bought with my money, time and effort?
Time, merely spent, perhaps a pleasant memory with those I love, but then hollow emptiness, and the passing of time. I did not forestall death, I only distracted myself for a short time, while it crept up a little closer.
There is no distraction that will impede that approach. Entertainment, like morphine, drips into our veins and fills our minds; numbing us to our true lives, dulling our perceptions, and deadening us to God’s presence.
It would be time better spent, to call relentlessly upon our Great Physician; to heal and to calm us, to bring us peace; and rather turn aside from these opioids for the soul, that only imitate a cure, sedating us for a time, mollifying our symptoms, but not addressing our underlying disease.
We need you God, whether we know it or not; whether we will admit it or not. It is existentially true. And without You, Lord, we do not realize how miserable we truly are, and in this, our misery has no cure.
~FS
Prayerful Life 