What do you hold onto?
What do you return to for comfort or for a replicated idea of beauty? Maybe it’s a memory, maybe it’s a sensation that you are chasing. Maybe it’s a place, a drug, an Instagram post, a cup of coffee. Maybe It’s your routine and habits that brings you comfort every day, but you secretly hate and know is killing you slowly. Maybe it’s your phone in the morning, going from Instagram, to Facebook, to snapchat, to messages, to emails, on an hour cycle that makes you feel bored and alone.
What we cling to matters. Who and what we look to for our happiness shapes our hearts and our minds more than I think we realize. Maybe I’m crazy, maybe I’m the only one that feels as, so they’ve been robbed of some part of their heart. Sometimes it feels I’m half alive, half dead. Sometimes I wake up from dreams that were profoundly beautiful, only to go to my phone and loose them, lose the feeling of it, and slowly begin my daily routine. I think many of us are forcing our hearts into boxes, shapes, tunnels of discomfort and suffocation. In our highly connected society full of entertainment, instant gratification and “online connection”, how many of us honestly feel alive? Do you? Does your heart feel free? Free from the habits that you hate, free from the routines that you know are limiting you. Free from the comparison that you know is rooted in insecurity. Free from the endless anxiety of checking your phone because you feel oppressed and feel like you aren’t worthy of love, nor are you being seen by others. Truly seen. This vicious cycle of social media wounds us in the way that it is taking the place of our natural desire to be seen. Yet we are literally clinging to a piece of plastic manufactured by a billion-dollar company who could care less about you. Those apps we are constantly tapping on and scrolling on have been built to manipulate and addict us. They hire the best in psychology just to make sure they can get us to block our faces just a little longer.
But what we are clinging to is wrecking us. In our routines, we let little spontaneous ideas and actions happen, even at all. For me doing things spontaneously always has brought great joy. I believe that as humans some of our most beautiful moments rarely come from being overly organized and planned out. Imagine going on a vacation in the car and you have it all planned out. Every single stop, every dinner, every single hour of your five-day vacation booked. But what if you liked that river and wanted to stop? To bad. What if you just wanted to stay in one place because you fell in love with it? To bad.
I know this is an extreme example but I’m just trying to illustrate that what we cling to matters. Is it bringing us joy and calling us higher or not? Is it letting us experience life and God in radically different ways or not? Has God become a routine as well? Has church on Sunday been added to your weekly schedule? The more we book out our moments with routines and expectations the more we limit ourselves to experience life and the beauty life holds in the present moment. The more we limit God to a building, or a routine, the same happens. God becomes a task to complete, rather than a deeply profound, beautiful, mysterious, and transformative relationship that calls us higher. To be higher versions of ourselves. To walk in freedom, to walk in happiness, to walk setting others free from despair, mental illness, death, and walking through life half alive. I love people. The best way for me to serve people is to make sure my heart is filled and strong. See – the relationship God wants for us is the same relationship we need to have with our own lives. Allowing space to newness to come in, for spontaneous actions and moments to fill us with joy. To not hold so tightly to our routines and to our instant gratifications and entertainment systems(yikes). Rather wake up daily with a heart open, free, and ready to experience and love anything that comes our way. When we live so, I believe we enter a deeper, more profound dance with life than most of us are currently living today. It takes getting uncomfortable, just like sometimes getting uncomfortable with God. However, the results always bring us higher, unlock doors of joy and wonder, and free our hearts like never.
What are we willing to stop clinging to, in order to receive more? What comforts and routines do we know are slowly harming us but cling too because their instant, easy, and above all addicting. When we walk with Jesus we are called to walk in freedom. I believe it’s our responsibility to be the light in the world, and to remind others that God’s intentions do not line up with the intentions of the world. God’s intentions do not line up with that social media company, or that job you hate. No, His intentions a line with freedom, joy, wonder, peace, and a deep sense of purpose and meaning.
There’s nothing I hold onto.
“If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.”
Matthew 6:33 MSG
