Daily Archives: August 19, 2008
More on that fleeting feeling of intimacy
Yesterday I wrote about the temporal nature of intimacy. Someone commented that after being gone for so long, I sure came back with a depressing post. *grin* Well, it wasn’t meant to be depressing. The truth is intimacy is not fleeting, but the feeling of it may be.
This morning I read another chapter in Blue Like Jazz. I’m loving this book, but because of all the other things I’m reading at the same time (Thank you, ADD.), it’s taking me a while to finish. In the portion I read today, the author, Donald Miller, wrote about how people can’t stay happy for long periods of time. He said: “Joy is a temporal thing. Its brief capacity, as reference, gives it its pleasure.”
I like that. It reminds me of something Ted Dekker once wrote on his blog. He was asked why he writes so specifically and graphically about evil. He said: “I refuse to become complicit with evil by characterizing that nasty, nasty stuff in a way that softens its destructive bite. Doing so would not only be deceptive but it would undermine the great victory won by our hero in His majestic defeat of this terrible villain called evil.” Now, he’s talking about good versus evil and I’m only talking about the varying degrees of feeling close to God, but it’s the same point. You need contrast to recognize value.
In other words, without times in the pit, those mountain top experiences I spoke about yesterday wouldn’t mean as much. If we felt high on grace and blessings all the time, we wouldn’t treasure them as much. They’re presence would become mundane, ordinary, expected. Diamonds are not precious because they’re found in every back yard. They’re a treasure to be sought after and showcased when found.
In the same way we should seek after those moments in which we feel overcome by intimacy with God. We need to work at our relationship with him and treasure the moments when our security in Him matches our emotions toward Him. But we also need to praise Him for the down-time that highlights those awesome moments in perfect communion with Him. Without the valleys, the mountains wouldn’t seem so great.
