Seeking Peace

I've been struggling recently to break out of what I've referred to as motivated apathy, or learning without really learning anything. However, in lieu of writing a terribly bitter and angry note, I’ve decided to write of the rays of hope I have in this world.

A long time ago I discovered, but never really accepted, the fact that I’m never at peace unless alone in God’s creation. Reading Romantic poetry brings tears to my eyes, viewing a sunset makes my heart soar to it, and sitting on a mountaintop alone provides me with clarity of thought. Never am I surer of my God and His provision than when I am in full view of the stars.

I’ve convinced myself for years that music or movies provide me with a like happiness and similar fulfillment. Songs like All Flowers In Time or Christians songs such as Angels Fall Down and Thy Mercy inevitably better my day. Certainly, a moving film may cause me to cry or to love or to hate, but all this emotion cannot equate peace. More importantly, I’ve been blessed with wonderful friends, skilled in raising spirits and always lending me a smile when I have none of my own, but this is all still too short-lasting. Ultimately, I desire peace with God. Since I cannot be immediately with him, I want to go out and live off of locusts and wild honey, swamped in what is pure. I want to adhere to desert monasticism like St. Antony. I want to found an island so simplicity may be my life forever. When impatience and irritability strike, I hate that I can’t just be done with life on earth already. I was reading Faust today and found these words:

The god, who throned within my breast resides,
Deep in my soul can stir the springs;
With sovereign sway my energies he guides,
He cannot move external things;
And so existence is to me a weight.
Death fondly I desire, and life I hate.

The truth is though, that he does move external things. He moves them through us (you could say working within free will), and despite how useless I may sometimes feel, I am His and thus useful for His glorification -it is only selfishness to claim otherwise, exalting your own will against God's.

I may have problems with living here, where fulfillment of my deepest desires to find God in His creation are virtually impossible (instead I'm generally enclosed within my dorm room walls), and so I may not find the comfort I immediately seek. I must accept that God will grant earthly and heavenly peace in His own time. Though I look about me in this city filled with evil and apathy, I know that I can, and must, keep standing that I may hold firm and serve. As for now, I find my comfort in the remembrance of God’s appearance to Elijah, not in the earth-rending storms, but in the peace of utter stillness.