Before leaving for California, my friend Archie gave me a book called The One Year Daily Grind.  It’s a daily devotional written in the style of daily blog entries, and the tag line on the cover reads, “Grab a mocha and spend some time with God–every day.”  I like that idea; I need to spend more time with God.  I’ve needed to for a while, but only in the past year or so have I really begun to realize the extent of that need.

The entry for September 3rd, titled “Quiet Desperation,” recalls this familiar quote:

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
— Henry David Thoreau

In this particular day’s entry, author Sarah Arthur talks about looking out of her window and people-watching, something I like to do from time to time.  She wonders how many people are living a life in which they have no concept of God, and who therefore have no concept of the hope that Christ’s death and resurrection represents.  She writes that imagining how many people may be in that boat is enough to make her depressed even though she has “been given a kingdom that is unshakable,” a reference to Hebrews 12:28.

I think there are plenty of us who know God and who still have those moments of desperation.  A lot of people who aren’t Christian seem to think that Christians always think we have all of the answers.  We don’t, but it’s our fault that we give that impression, because we tend to get so cocky about things just because we feel that God has our back.

It would be so much easier if accepting Christ was the moment that we got every answer to every question, that we could suddenly know, beyond any doubt, that we were on the right track.  There would never be any need to re-evaluate who we are, why we’re here and what we’re doing with our gifts.  Then again, I guess that if there was never a need to ask ourselves such questions, there’d be no more opportunity to grow.

Off and on for the past few years, I’ve been feeling my own kind of quiet desperation.  That there’s something out there waiting for me that I’ve just managed to not take any notice of, and that I need to find.  If that doesn’t make a lot of sense to someone who reads this but may not know me personally — which I imagine is most of the people who read this little blog — then don’t feel bad; it doesn’t fully make a lot of sense to me, either.  But that’s the best way I can describe it.

But I know that something has been missing.  I’m happy professionally.  I’m not inordinately unhappy personally.  (How’s that for diplomatic?)  But there’s something more that I know I should be doing, and I’m only beginning to start figuring out what that is.  I have a pretty good idea at this point, because it has been needling me for a while now, first as a whisper, but more recently — particularly in the past year and thanks to a good friend — as something more clear and pronounced.

And it’s still a scary thought.

But change is supposed to be a little scary, right?  Stepping out of a comfort zone, no matter how small the step happens to be is supposed to be a little unnerving.  Even if you don’t actually leave the confines of the comfort zone…if you just take a baby step here and there towards its boundary, that’s a frightening proposition.  Otherwise, I suppose there’d be no such thing as a “comfort zone,” right?

But I think that not taking the steps, once you start to realize what they are, can only lead to more quiet desperation.