“Boldly, I approach your throne / Blameless now I’m running home…”
I sang the words along with everyone else at the Rend Collective concert. It’s one of my favorite worship songs because it calls us, it calls me, to run to my Father because of His great love for me, to run home because the Cross has purchased my salvation.
But as I sang, my mind raced with thoughts I’m not used to having. “Do you really want to run to Him? Why aren’t you excited about this? You used to love this notion of being home with God. And now you’re unsure if you even want Him at all.”
And I realized that my heart, usually so full of love and emotion, had become so shrouded in cynicism that I was having a hard time feeling anything.
It makes sense though, in a way. Our culture values cynics and skeptics. People who question the status quo are seen as visionaries and revolutionaries. And in my own personal life, it was not hard to see where cynicism had crept in.
I’m currently working fulltime at a job that requires major amounts of emotional energy and lots of physical strength in an enormously stressful setting. I’m in graduate school, which means that my previously very active social life has been slashed and my schedule now consists of mostly papers and homework and online lectures in between working. I’ve also been disappointed multiple times in the area of relationships with guys, which is tough for a girl who has longed for marriage since childhood. I’ve been dealing with minor yet undiagnosed health problems for over a decade that continue to be a source of confusion and frustration.
It’s hard to keep a soft heart when it just keeps getting needled and jabbed and broken. Eventually, the natural inclination is to harden it so then maybe the pain won’t hurt as much. Wrap it in a shell of low expectations. That way, when things don’t work out again, I can just say “Whatever. I didn’t expect it to go my way anyway.” That’s what I’ve been doing for months.
But that night, singing truth, I realized that God has called me to something more than this attitude of skepticism and disappointment. He has called me to Love. He has called me to Himself.
C.S. Lewis once said “To love is to be vulnerable.” It is possible to not be vulnerable but, as Lewis reminded us, it requires hardening the heart. And there is very little joy or beauty to be found in a hardened heart.
So I have a choice. I can continue down this path—cynical, hardened, still broken—or I can give my heart to Jesus again. There’s no guarantee that it won’t break, but He is the Great Physician and he specializes in healing broken hearts. There’s no guarantee I will get what I want. But I will get what I need. And I know that, more than I need a husband or a less stressful job or a body that works the way it’s supposed to, I need Him.
I know that He loves me, that He is good, and that He is enough. So I build my house on the Rock of my salvation. I’m fighting for joy, striving for love, resting in Jesus.
And that is a better attitude than cynicism any day.
If you know someone who is struggling to not be cynical, will you email them this post to encourage them?
