seeds and weeds.

i think that i am a pilgrim. sometimes people laugh when i say that. but it is true. i am going somewhere that i have not found. i do not know how to get there. i am searching, and trusting something greater than myself to lead me. i do not believe that it is enough to say that this world is not my home, that i am destined for some future, yet eternal, glorious place, and go on living in this life as if it is my home. i do not believe that i should be comfortable here. but i also do not believe that this means i should be miserable here. i believe that to follow Christ, to be saintly, means to live by faith and by hope. to live by faith, trusting in the things i cannot see, trusting in the eternal reality of the kingdom of heaven and not this earthly reality which is constantly before me. and by hope, hoping for the coming of that kingdom, not in the future, but eternally, which includes, i would imagine, now. as Christ taught us to pray, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. and so if nothing else, i feel like a pilgrim.

i live in a new city now. it is a place that i am not familiar with. i am not yet a part of it. mostly, i am becoming a part of the land outside of town, digging my hands into its dirt, pulling out its weeds, trying to bring life to a tired piece of this earth, worn by years of the world's ways of doing things. and mostly i am alone, living alone, working alone, and yet always drawing nearer to the God who beckons me. my life has changed in ways that i had not imagined. for a while, it seemed as though the things i was moving towards were not the things that God was leading me towards. for a while i thought that i had begun to make sense of things, that i had found direction and calling and purpose. but now i know that is not true. what i have found, and what has always been constant, is the tender, small voice of a mighty God, saying come. it as if this voice is saying, has always been saying, i can't explain where we are going, but stay close, follow me.

there is so much that for so long i have been trying to make sense of. for so long i have been trying to understand what it means to live in this world, fallen as it is, beautiful as it is, and yet live for another one. i have been trying to understand what it means to follow Christ in a world that hates Him, yet a world that He so deeply loves. and i have wondered why, if Christ loves this world enough to redeem, i should not, perhaps, also love it enough to practice redemption. perhaps first i must stop practicing destruction.

i have been planting some seeds and pulling a lot of weeds lately. and i have begun to realize that perhaps that is what God has been doing for quite some time.


Holy Father, grant that we might be
      as plants firmly rooted by faith in Christ,
      and as seeds blown by the wind of His movement.