the GOD series:Hebrews 11 and Hebrews 12:from fantasy to faith.

"I have climbed highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you
I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing fingertips
It burned like a fire
This burning desire
I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
I believe in the Kingdom Come
When all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
Well, yes I'm still running
You broke the bonds
And you loosened the chains
Carried the crossOf all my shame
all my shame
You know I believe it
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for"
music and lyrics by U2 "i still haven't found what i'm looking for"

“FROM FANTASY TO FAITH”
There is the old joke about getting everything you want. “Be careful...” it begins, warning us about the prayer that asks for the things we think we need only to find, when we have them...I have been thinking about getting everything I want. It seems now possible that I can have it all. It is not just a childhood dream anymore, this pursuit of the worthy life. It is now possible reality. So, what if? What if I wrote that book that said all I had to say and married that woman in the embrace of total love and lived in that light house on a hill with the children, long sought and prayed for, playing easily in the shifting, high grass? What will happen when my inner dreams finally match outer reality?
My answer has always been too simple: joy, fulfilment, completeness. I might be 70 years old when I notice that my life is good, might be on a deathbed with a fading heart, only then sensing that the shadows of heaven have been around me all along. Still, the picture will be complete.
Now, however, I see holes appearing in my dreams of completeness. I see blotches on the white garment of my future-mind. In the middle of my reverie about the perfect day lies the imperfect mind that creates such mass-manufactured bliss. I underestimate the very real hunger of my own soul.
I remember what it felt like at the summit of the romantic love I shared recently. The way I would watch her do the most mundane task, eating perhaps, and attach holiness to that sacred moment. The way she could gently bend my day away from darkness and into her glowing light by telling me to be calm, to not let the flood overwhelm me, to be more like myself. I remember holding her hand and feeling connected in every way, walking in a crowd but seeing only her, laughing at our private jokes, calling her for no reason but love, counting the seconds in between till she replied some text I had sent her with the wit of her brain and the colour of her beautiful heart. It felt perfect, unstoppable, like the alchemy, the all-cure, the all-thing, the love that all other inklings with other women led up to. Complete. Not perfect, but complete. And yet I was still hungry. I would needle her over irrelevant nonsense, feign jealousy at innocuous acts , switch off when she wanted to talk deep and all the time test her, probe, push, pull, look for where the weakness was, try to prove that there was something wrong here, that love could not be true and so naturally so. At first I put it all down to not trusting love or that anyone could love me and not leave. So why not speed up the process of departure? Now I know better. We were total in our fragile state and had the potential to be more but it was not enough for me. I wanted something more. Our hearts are carved in the shape of heaven. The things we chase can lead us further or closer to that. Yet they cannot be that place. I could stare into those beautiful eyes forever and it would not be enough. If we are honest about our true state, this is all of us. When you get what you want you get busy with trying to keep it. If you do not, if you allow one minute of introspection, one second of inner study of the entire picture of your desire, you will see how hungry you still are. The big secret about life on planet earth is: nothing satisfies.
Within all of us is this hunger for heaven that only heaven can satisfy. There is no complete life without the complete picture of God, no real freedom without the great boundary of faith, no real end without a beginning in God. The final frontier is faith; the last safe place is the in the arms of a certain belief and the fulfilment of that stand is the full fulfilment of the single soul.
I am writing this on the outer bench of a church. There is that microphone in the air sound, the static, the trumpet, the horn, the voice of one certain in his hopes, the safety we seek in concepts like God and free will and church community. A boy cries for his mother. He hugs her legs and she bears him up, toward the safety of her embrace. There is this illusion of simple need met by simpler action. It speaks also of the illusion of safety hidden in the great cathedrals of our minds. No room to be troubled or sad or wrong or wronged. Always act “as if”. As if you are not scared. As if he/she did not hurt you. As if you are not in pain. Walk on in pretence. And then we call this faith. To cover up every question we have about the state of our souls and the state of our world because we hope that in God’s divine safety net we will not be touched by storm or fire, by wind or by flood. The mark of the blood (and you must repeat “blood of...”) will separate us from the Egyptians (sorry, D.) and we will be safe. The bounty of heaven will grant all our desires and we will be rich. The giver of destinies will make us important and we will do well. The redeemer will find us a spouse, a house, a car and a job and all the doubters, the charlatans will bow to our affirmation as the sons of God risen from out of scripture to live life full. Is this not faith? No. This is fantasy. I agree that in the early days of the God-experience it all seems like this. Promises made from the heart of your new love seem to say you have come to rest and all your former frustrations with everything but yourself have come to a crucial end at the cross of Calvary. This is fantasy. The reality is blood and gore and death in discomfort. The reward is resurrection and life forever. This is our faith.
There is no moment for me like the moments in which I am writing. It is complete all by itself. Time stops, hunger disappears, I am at the wheel of my own special car. I have entered that zone where Christ told his over-eager disciples “my meat and drink is to do the will of my father.” And where Tupac Shakur noted: “I feel the hand of God on my brain when I write rhymes.” I feel most like myself in between a paper, a pen and the forming of words steadily in my head and heart. And even this is not enough. There are dry days when the wells of inspiration are hard and deep. I cannot spend my whole life in the solitude of writing. It may feel complete but it will not complete me. There is still the more I want beyond this. For fantasy is to take glimpses as the full picture, a rest on a mountaintop as the end of all valleys ,to think that faith is about giving you all you want rather than the assurance that in God’s brilliant lights you will find all you need.
A verse in Hebrews 11 makes this crucial statement about faith: “and all these died without receiving the things that God had promised them.” When I read that it bothered me so much I put it away for a few...years. Yet we have to look at truth when we see it and in looking at the first promise we are told about between a rising God and a fallen man on the basis of faith we find the secret of every subsequent promise. “Come Abram, leave all you know and come to a place that I will show you.” Our entire faith is here. Come from the comfort of family, from the scourge of indifference, from the every religious inclination, every church or mosque, every prayer house or group of doubt, come from where you are right now, from that imperfection called your former life, come to be who you truly are, come and find faith out of that fantasy called the ordinary life.
The promise was never physical safety or ‘true love’ or a soul that wants nothing. The promise is hunger, cold, comfort, truth, power, weakness, loss and all these wonderful ingredients leading to one glorious end-Him. The reward for the worthy life is God. God does not lead us down this road of tragedy and grace so we can get a gift. The gift is Him. Nothing else will do at the end of the road of life. The world is not enough for any of us.
Think of the last time you experienced the end of any pleasure, satiation. A good meal making you full, an orgasm, an evening with a person you adore, a job well done, anything at all. Just be sure to think honestly. It was not enough, was it? Somewhere in your soul you have to admit that it only made you more aware of your hunger. It did not cure you. You knew you would be hungry again. Hungry for more food or achievement or sex or intimacy. More. All these things we chase tell us there is more. They are not the more.
God is the more. Faith is the belief that He is the final place we are going and where all of this drama we see and feel will make sense. It is so simple it is by instinct we draw close to it. While we have to invent fantasy, all we have to do to embrace faith is to listen to the hunger of our soul. And listen to what it says as we fail and fail again to fill it with all the air in the world. For if there is no God or He has been replaced by science or logic, if all of this is some carefully constructed myth sustained over time by a Mafioso church and only that, then why are we still hungry? Why do we still want more than we can get in this world?
It is time for us to end the fantasy. To chose to live up to the truth. To join the league of those who know they will not be satisfied, until...those that hunger and thirst...for they shall be filled...to move from fantasy to faith.