I Am Unhealthy

I've been down too long, lost without any sign of being found. I think I've finally identified it. I am unhealthy. I don't mean that I'm sick, that I have something wrong with me. I'm just unhealthy. I heard someone say on NPR recently, being healthy is a lot more than just not being sick. He was right.

I eat even when I'm not hungry, just for the tiny pleasure of it. And I don't eat healthy. I drink too much and probably smoke too much too. I over sleep just about every day. I neglect nearly all times of spiritual reflection. I waste energy in a hundred small ways. I'm doing my part to warm the planet.

I try to fill my life with pleasures: eating and drinking with friends, enjoying all the benefits of urban living. I don't exercise enough. I drink caffeine until the sun goes down, when I switch to alcohol.

My thoughts are clouded with politics and sports rivalry. I consider all day long how my team might win, so that maybe I'll feel a little validation, feel like I'm a part of something although I'm no more than a passive observer.

When it comes to doing the work of God, I'm at a total loss. I participate in things that seem good but I doubt their lasting value. I doubt my ability to make any difference.

I fill my head with ideas that seem to be wisdom, that show how the world has got it all wrong. But I still live like the world.

I am unhealthy, through and through. I blame my emptiness on my alarm clock. If only it could get me out of bed at a decent time, I wouldn't spend every morning scrambling to get to work. And then I might not come home tired and bored and lonely. Then I might not reach for every easy pleasure that leaves me all the more empty.

If only I had a community that could carry me, that would find me when I'd lost it. That would show me a better way to live.

"You created nothing that gives me more pleasure than You. And You won't give me something that gives me more pleasure than You." - Caedmon's Call, You Created

It's You alone I need, my Savior and my God. I need You to remake me into something new. I need You to cure me of what ails me. I need radical simplicity. I need to declare a holy fast. I need true repentance. I need Your life for mine.

I'm tempted by a new law. A new system of rules to live by that will keep me healthy and on the right path. I want a holy checklist that will guarantee I feel better about myself and my place in the world.

But instead, I'm stuck with You. I have to wrestle You for everything or so it seems. You don't make anything easy. You used to lay Your hands on people and they were healed. You used to magically make problems disappear. But I guess You don't work that way any more, or You never really did. It's a hard road instead.

It's not self-discipline or self-governing that makes a disciple of Christ. It's self-denial. It's yielding myself completely to You and Your purposes. It's binding myself to radical discipleship that promises to undo all I've done. It's wrestling with you every day for the next step, the next choice. It's realizing I can't live an hour without you.

Lord, You know I'm a wanderer, prone to leave You, to forget You, to deny You. May Your goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to Thee. Help me to accept Your grace that covers over all my unhealthiness, all my disease. Help me to wake up to a new day and a new road called the pursuit of God.