The Struggle

On Thursdays I watch my nephew during the day.  He is nearly one year old, he is spirited and playful and like most little ones hates nap time.  We have our weekly routine of pacifier, blanket, Matt Maher on the stereo, and Aunt T snuggles on the way to dreamland.  As he gets older he fights harder and harder to stay awake.  His tired eyes stay triumphantly open and his little arms push fiercely against my embrace.  My strategy in these moments is to “play dead” in a sense.  This morning, knowing how tired he was and how desperate for sleep, I sat on the floor, holding him close I leaned my back against the bed and closed my eyes.  While Aunt T pretended to sleep Isaac picked his head up and looked around the room desperately searching for something interesting enough to keep his eyes open.  About two Matt Maher songs in his little head became too heavy and plopped down on my chest and there we lay for another song in perfect peace, harmony, and surrender.

As I sat on the floor with my eyes closed waiting for him to surrender to the exhaustion, I thought of our relationship with God and the parallels to my nap-time experience.  In this scenario we are Isaac and God pulls us close in a captivity that is for our own good.  If we surrender to it we find rest and for brief moments perfect harmony with Him.  Yet, we struggle, we see His embrace as constricting, a limit to our liberty, we don’t think we need the rest, besides the call of the world is so inviting:

 “Haven’t you heard about the sexual revolution, we have birth control, abortion if that fails…do what you feel.”

“Happiness lies in money, power, and fame.  Work long hours or do something outrageous to get noticed.  Kindness, compassion, and respect are things of the past; you want fame, money, and power.”

“You should have the best: new furniture, big house, nice tv, great phone.  All of the best things, see he has them, and you deserve them too, just swipe that shiny, plastic card, it’s ‘instant happiness’.”

While the world whispers her lies to us, we wander her streets exhausted, our life passes in a blur before droopy eyes.  We fight rest and God’s embrace with everything in us.  He blesses us when, as I did with Isaac this morning, He sits on the floor and won’t let us go.  We crane our necks and look around and around at all we can see, fighting hard against His arms of morality, but there He sits “sleeping” and setting the example of rest for us, until we can finally succumb to His embrace and find that freedom is sweetest when you surrender to the one truly loving authority.