Tuesday, July 31, 2007

"Why do you want to leave?"

There have been times recently when I have found myself saying to certain people, “God, I can’t wait to get out of here.” Most of them really don’t know what to do with that statement, and even if they don’t come right out and ask, you can see that they’re thinking, “Why would you want to leave?” Well, there are a number of reasons, but let’s start with the fact that it’s boring here. After you have reached a certain age, you realize that there is truly nothing new under the sun. That which has been will be again. That which is now has already been. You begin to feel as though you’ve seen every movie that comes out at least half a dozen times in other versions, and that every place you visit looks and feels just like home. People seem appallingly the same no matter where you go, no matter what their culture. You realize that these are human beings and they’ve got arms and legs and noses and ears and basically the same needs, the same instincts, and therefore cultures are basically the same regardless of their outward trappings. In addition, we’re living in a day and age when there are so many of us that wherever you go it’s just chaos and frustration. When you get to a certain age, trying to deal with the languages, currencies, and customs and having to worry about whether you’re going to unintentionally offend someone in this other culture, becomes very burdensome, so the whole thing becomes very boring.

Another reason, perhaps the most important in the long run, is that you reach a point eventually in your journey when you are tired of having to rein yourself in. You are tired of not permitting yourself to have certain feelings or to act upon them. You get tired of pretending to be somebody else. This can manifest in little ways, as when you have to say, “Oh yes, Mrs. So and So, I just love your angel food cake. Thanks for bringing over another one that you baked all by yourself.” I hate angel food cake. I’d like to be able to say -- and one of the reasons I have so few friends today is that I do say -- “Thank you, Mrs. So and So, but you know, I’ve never cared much for angel food cake. It’s no fault of yours, and I’m sure it’s delicious, but I would really appreciate it if you didn’t bring them over any more, because all I do is either give them away or dump them in the garbage.” You finally realize that all of life is having to please other people, go by other’s rules, try not to offend peoples’ sense of morality or ethics or political orthodoxy. It dawns on you that as long as you’re going to be in this world, you’re going to have to be nice to people. You must yield to their sense of right and wrong. You must compromise every day that you’re here. And you begin to picture heaven more and more as a place where you don’t have to do that. You can be who God made you to be. You can be anything, and everybody loves it. It’s a place where you can’t offend or be offended, a place where there is no loss. Things don’t burn down, people don’t die. Relationships don’t fall apart. Businesses don’t disintegrate. Vineyards don’t get frostbitten and crops killed by the locusts. Imagine, folks, a place that has everything that you love about this world, and nothing that you hate about it, where there are no irritations or disharmony or strife or sickness or war or poverty or famine -- none of those things that make life so interesting here that we have to report on them ad infinitum. Of course, this is a world of disasters, natural and manmade, because it’s a soap opera, and for the eight decades we have to be here, it would be boring if not for all this melodrama, but you do get to the point, friends, where you get bored anyway. You get bored by violence, noise, rudeness, greed, and falsehood. You just want to go to a place where everything is nice, and so you find yourself saying, more and more, “Oh God, I can’t wait to get out of this place.” Now, you might think, “Well, if you feel that way, then spare us your misery and just kill yourself.” Well, friends, you’d be surprised how many times I’ve already tried that. Believe me, I am here to say, by experience, that if it’s not your time to leave, you ain’t gonna get out of here. If you think that we have choice about our exit time, you’re very mistaken. The Almighty often uses our own hands to remove us from this place, but it’s still God’s decision, not yours or mine. There are, of course, many other reasons why people wish they weren’t here. We can go into those another time.

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