The Circus

More from Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller.

The circus, and I am talking about life now, really sucks. It feels like we all have these little acts, these stupid things we do that we all hang our hats on. The Fall has made monkeys of us, for crying out loud. Some of us are athletes and others of us are physicists, and some of us are good-looking and some of us are rich, and we are all running around, in a way, trying to get a bunch of people to clap for us, trying to get a bunch of people to say we are normal, we are helathy, we are good. And there is nothing wrong with being beautiful or being athletic or being smart, but those are some of the pleasures of life, not life's redemption.....

One writer said that what we commonly think of as love is really the desire to be loved. I know that is true for me, and it has been true for years, that often when I want somebody to like me, I am really wanting them to say that I am redeemed, that I am not a loser, that I can stay in the boat, stay int he circus, that my act redeems me.

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Galatians 5:19-21 It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; 20trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; 21the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

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My reaction: What I long for, the desire to be loved, is genuine and authentic. In fact, it is designed to be that way. Deep within, the cry is to know that the God of the universe who fashioned the fibers of my being, truly loves me. It isn't about what can do to deserve it. I cannot do anything to earn more love, nor can I do anything to prohibit it either. God loves each person, me, in a way that is disconnected from what we can bring. He chooses to love free from all our ideas on what love is. I can look to all sorts of ways to satisfy this longing, but the only fix is Christ. It took so long for me to realize this. Standing on this side now, I know that Christ's love consumes everything I do. As a result, I can give love, and not merely the romantic mushy stuff, but the willingness to go to any length for others, whether or not I "feel" love or they deserve anything. I aspire to shine forth the love I've received in a like manner from which it orginated.