There's more to life than merely living

I took this photo of Norm's boat (yellow) and Jerry's (blue) on the Colorado River a couple years ago. With Jerry you knew there was more to life than merely living. He went way beyond just the joys of the river. And he did it in pain.

Jerry lived in pain and had cancer a fifth of his life. I think pain opens our hearts to search for God. For Jerry and for many of us, pain that causes us to look for God is not the peevish pain of a grumbler who mumbles discontent. And Jerry certainly never asked the painful question, "Why me?" It's not the angry pain of a narcissist who finds out that self-centeredness has consequences. It's not the pain of someone needing a psychiatrist who is trying to like himself better, or enjoy life more.

Rather, it is the pain of someone who wants to enjoy pleasures he cannot find and who fears that misery seems inevitable and perhaps deserved. It is pain that makes us stand still and think about something outside of ourselves, something more important and more interesting than our concerns about who we are and how we're doing. It is pain that compels us to ask terrifying questions about life and God.

Only the frightening, immobilizing, and awe-inspiring, realization that we are out of God's Garden with no way back in and that supernatural powers hover about us will stop us long enough to hear what is beyond our immediate experience. Only then can God speak through His words to introduce us to a new dimension of life.

I like Hebrews 11:6, looking to God: "And without faith it is impossible to please him, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek Him."