living a better story doesn't always mean leaving (and a thousand other apologies)

There is something deeply embedded into our culture that communicates to us that the cure for tension is to leave.  That when the going gets rough, then it's time to uproot and find your dreams elsewhere.


We can find a million excuses as to why indeed we should leave.

We can even stamp the idea as God's will for our life.

Thinking and believing that we were designed for something greater.  Something bigger.

My question would be

                              bigger than what?

Bigger than the community you are placed in?
Bigger than the real people that are really around you that are really

made in God's likeness?

I heard it once said that Satan's biggest objective was to take center stage in God's story, and since he's failed to do so, his biggest objective now is to convince us that the center stage belongs to us.

We all ask a lot of questions concerning our lives, and they are mostly legitimate questions.

I think the danger is when the question, "Where does God want me to be?"

                  trumps the question, "Who does God want me to be?"

When we focus so intensely on the geography of God's plan it can be easy to assume when things get rough that it's God's will we should leave.

If we were to take a closer look at the question


"Who does God want me to be?"

We might just discover that the kind of person God desires for us to be is the kind of person


                                           who stays.


After all, God has an infinite reputation for staying.  It's not hard to find in scripture.  He stayed with the Israelites.  He stayed with kings and prophets.  Jesus stayed with his disciples.  He stayed with sinners.  With dirty people.  People everyone else had left.


he stayed with you.



The parable for eternity that marriage is is one of permanence.  Covenant. 



So what sense does it make that we - being made in God's likeness, should be creatures who leave when things get hard?

When people get unbearable?

When jobs get overwhelming?

When relationships need

too

much

reconciling.



I'm guilty.

I'm guilty of leaving.  Of looking for a bigger, better story.

Of trying to create for myself a world where I was center stage.  I did it because

I'm
prideful
selfish
think and act like I'm better than everyone else
convinced I'm somehow special.


so when I left, I left some wreckage.

I left

relationships that needed words of healing.  that needed apology.
friendships that needed investing.  that needed commitment.
courses that needed better grades.  that needed harder work ethic.
....
and a library that needed paid late fees.

In some fashion or another,
I made a lot of enemies here, and somewhere along the road I just decided that it would be

       easier to leave than to
                   deal with it.


and now, through a lot of grace
and a lot of sovereignty


I'm back.

and I have a lot of work to do.



Stability has wisdom - and this is what she says -

when you are tempted to leave, remember that you are made in the image of a bigger God.

a God who stayed









with you.