"It ain't me babe, no, no, no..."

The words have a familiar ring. To wit, my daily friend, Oswald Chambers, "God puts us where we will best be able to Glorify Him, and it is not left to us to judge where that is." And if we do try to judge, cue the music once more, we might sing "...it ain't me you're looking for babe".

No one ever called by God has jumped at the chance to serve in the way He has decided. Nearly all of the heavy hitters in Judeo-Christian faith history had their excuses: "you must be kidding, you must be thinking of someone else...I can't speak well...I'm lame...I'm not educated...I am not a member of that society..." Of course, everyone knows the example of Jonah, the man who ran away to hide himself from God.

I have run from God for years, hiding in misguided career paths, relationships, idleness, and duplicity. I've spent a great deal of time celebrating when there was nothing to celebrate, looking for things I already had and asking for help when none was needed. All of this was an attempt to escape, to hide from a reality so blatantly evident, that looking at it burned my eyes like the light from a welding rod. I hid behind self invented missconceptions, bigotries and arrogance, putting myself in the position of the intellectual, a gnostic elitist. But like the character Jonah, I could not escape the Furies, and I definitely lived in the belly of the leviathan. More than once.

It is true that one is always free to choose one's path. As long as one is willing to accept the consequences of the choice, it seems that everything is OK. This is easy for those with little to no conscience, outcomes mean nothing to them, hurt doesn't exist. Or does it? I believe we all have a conscience, we all know in our hearts that God is there, somewhere. It is the denial of that one thing that makes a wrong path become a road to emptiness. Then, all that's left is looking back and feeling that one's time here really didn't matter. There is nothing more depressing than believing in a wasted life.

God always wanted me to know, that only when I can come to the realization that it is His will and not mine, the running stops. The confusion ends. The hurting goes away. Only when I give up the quest for something outside of my own soul do I find the missing piece. Only when I quit asking do I get the answer. My path has always been set, I have been too fearful to walk it. Now I no longer seek. Now I must do.