“The great alarm the Scriptures are sounding is that our longing for life to be good again will be the battleground for our heart. How you shepherd this precious longing, and if you shepherd it at all, will determine your fate in this life and in the life to come.”- John Eldredge (emphasis author’s)
“Be appalled at this, you heavens, and shudder with great horror,” declares the LORD. “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”- Jeremiah 2:12-13 (NIV)
John Eldredge concludes Chapter 1 of Resilient with comments on the exodus of the people of Israel and their journey through the desert. A great survival story. Because no real sources of food existed in that desert. Furthermore, John compares the scarcity of water to the lack of water on the surface of the moon.
Hence, this question arises in regard to the Primal Drive for Life – where will we take our thirst? This question represents the choice, the test. As true in the past as in the present and the future. Therefore, John exhorts, “we must lovingly shepherd our famished thirst back to the source of life.”
In conclusion, the author observes, when we lose our hope and dreams, that suffocates the Primal Drive of Life. But God makes provision for us — the River of Life, God Himself. Most significantly, we just need to tap into it in new ways.
The author explains:
“In order to tap into the River of Life, we begin by loving God in our longing for life to be good again. That’s where things are decided. Nearly all of us having been chasing relief . . . without first turning to God. So we need to enter the longing, feel it, become present to it, and in that place start loving God. Choose him . . . We come back to Jesus from all the other places we’ve been chasing life.”
Today’s question: How do you respond to the great alarm the Scriptures sound? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “Knowing your moment matters”
