It has been a long standing mantra of mine that for every sound principle in scripture there is a counter-weight. Proverbs says, “Do not stray to the left or to the right.” The path of Truth is very narrow and precise and leaning too strongly on only one scripture or doctrine will cause your alignment with God to slip and pull you ever so slightly off the road. And off is off, it doesn’t matter which side of the path you fall off of, you are still off.

For this reason, I have tried to be very selective in what I post. I have not wanted to post anything that was not true or that was misleading and incomplete. However, I find that very limiting. Often I have thought that I had something that was truly a “Word from the Lord,” yet when others read it they immediately hit upon a question I had not considered, or poke a hole in the absolute truth of what I am writing about. There is always a counter weight. Something that pulls me back from becoming a caricature instead of an Image. “Be perfect even as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” And yet, the pursuit of perfection can also be a distraction if it takes us away from a simple faith that follows Jesus, even though we don’t know the way. Yet another paradox of following Jesus!

This morning as I was meditating, it occurred to me that God has not made us pure spirit.

He has not left us outside of Heaven either, as pure dust creatures, but instead has made us a hybrid of both.

We are part animal, always dependent on life from an outside source, always needing to eat, yet we are called to the noble task of being a “fruitful Tree or Vine” -Not a consumer, but a producer of Life, a giver of life to others wholly unlike ourselves. No, not wholly unlike. 🙂

I begin to see that it is a rejection of this hybrid nature that is at the root of my dilemma. I want to be all spirit, not weighed down by temporal things, not distracted by the mire of the day, but then who am I writing for? I am of no earthly good to anyone.

I want to come to God and seek Him and Him alone, but always my own need is there. I can not see just Him as He is, but must always filter my seeing through the lens of my own weakness and need for something from Him. Even the love of the feeling of His love can be a temptation to look away from His true gaze and chase the feeling, not the One. 

As always, the path lies not in the looking away from Truth, neither to the left and the pursuit of Earth, nor to the right and the pursuit of Heaven, but in acceptance of the tension that exists in being both- A creature of the land, with the Breath of Heaven and an eternal soul.

I come to You Father, as I am, as You have made me, fully dust, fully alive, because I need You AND because I want You.