So many times, so many countless times, you've heard the words uttered with such convicted fervor. Yet in your slightly padded chair, not even a whiff of Spirit-wind lifts a hair on your head. Despite the nicer-than-average clothes you have on, the mushy contents of your soul refuse to be stirred up by heartfelt prayer, by powerful music, by fervent testimony. All you can manage to feel is tired, even though you had plenty of sleep last night and two cups of strong coffee this morning. The exhaustion is like a living thing sitting rudely somewhere in the back of your chest, suppressing even the correct emotion that generally emerges in this context: guilt. Guilt--repentance--forgiveness--renewal, that's the sequence, the prescribed agenda for anyone as unmoved and ungrateful as yourself. And yet nothing happens.
Eventually, the service is over. You turn off that side of yourself, zip it up into a suitcase until the next time you need to sit staring at your Bible. A car ride home, a gray afternoon of normal activities, and all seems like a coma in your soul.
But this is not an existential movie and so that is not the final, tragic scene. This is your life. And at some moment, perhaps that evening, perhaps a year from now, a spark appears. Brought on by the smallest of unexpected things, it bursts up in flame like a handful of pine needles. And just like that, you're alive again.
Eventually, the service is over. You turn off that side of yourself, zip it up into a suitcase until the next time you need to sit staring at your Bible. A car ride home, a gray afternoon of normal activities, and all seems like a coma in your soul.
But this is not an existential movie and so that is not the final, tragic scene. This is your life. And at some moment, perhaps that evening, perhaps a year from now, a spark appears. Brought on by the smallest of unexpected things, it bursts up in flame like a handful of pine needles. And just like that, you're alive again.
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