"...men of the world, who have their portion in this life, and whose belly thou fill with thy hidden treasure; they are full of children and leave them the rest of their substance. As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." Ps.17:14-15
The lost do not focus on the right things. They cannot focus on what matters. They try: the lingering remnants of the image of God continues to pine and grasp desperately for what is real, and great motives and movements, intentions and institutions are thought up and actualized. But they will always miss the mark, and thus they will always fail. Invariably, some rabbit trail will dominate the conversation. Some particular will decimate the whole. Thus we get strange and sad anomalies, such as the call for peace while decrying the will to fight for it, or a demand for liberation while deconstructing all the very forms and methods of liberation. There is a cry for community coming from the very people who are destroying everything that has ever unified people together. At every turn, every well thought out plan that disregards the presence and promises of God falls apart. Meanwhile, we continually stumble over our own feet and wind up in the mud yet again.
"I will behold thy face." We have lost the real things; we have lost God. We try to get Him back on our own, or we try to get along without Him. Both routinely end in disaster. We cannot get to, or invent, the one thing that can account for and encompass every particular and thereby give us a proper framework for all the questions; and we have been going mad ever since. When God is lost (or disregarded), all is madness and folly. Without Reality, all that is left is Illusion (or illusions). Those of us who have been found by God must fight this insanity and despair. We who have been brought back to Reality by the blood of Christ must bring as much Reality back with us as we can.
-Jon Vowell (c) 2010
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