Jonny Heart: Long Distance Relationships...

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Long Distance Relationships...

I have come to despise long distance relationships. I myself once had a long distance relationship with my girlfriend at the time. I shall say first, difficulty does not bear the meaning of the term. Frustration seeps in and corrupts each other’s thoughts. Then if that didn’t seem like enough, after time you begin to feel separated emotionally. Without the physical presence of the other intimacy and love become stress instead of virtues. Temptation draws each other away to other enticing prospects; it just seems easier to give in and abandon then to continuously work out the Love. Our long distance relationship did not end well for us, and even though we seek reconciliation with one another, after a long separation the bond that once shared love will doubtfully be remade.

I envy the biblical writers and witnesses who could enjoy Christ’s teachings and live where he lived and walked where he walked. God’s manifestation in Christ seems that if I could only live when Jesus did I may share a closer bond with God for this reason, I can see the works of God manifested in a mere man and bask in his glory. Unfortunately, I may never have that honor and am forced to have a relationship that seems so distant. I can never place my hands on his robe or have him wipe the tears from my eyes. I can never see the passion that exploded from his words, which shook the foundations of fisherman.

The Gospel of John 1 reads;
In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning… the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and only, who came from the father full of grace and truth.

The word became flesh and dwelled with men. Those beautiful words of poetry barely justify the meaning and act they represent. God came to us and lived where we live so that we may live with him for eternity. If only I lived then and witness the life and light that was the word. Now he returned to his home in heaven and I endure a relationship that spans dimensions. Such an idea seems ludicrous. Because he lived so long ago sometimes it seems he never came at all and I find myself praying to a being that I forget experienced what I experience. Every temptation and every suffering I go through Jesus endured and suffered through as well. I want to reach out and clasp his cloak and weep at his feet but how impossible it seems to practice a relationship with someone I have never met. This frustrates me especially while I suffer.

I loathe long distance relationships yet despite my frustrations and doubt I continue to work out this relationship and continue to strive for a connection that endures the sufferings of life. It seems so similar to a long distance relationship but where my ex and I failed God succeeded. The relationship rests on my shoulders, I pray for strength to endure this lifetime of separation and live by hope to one day dwell with the word who is God.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: I think that most any Christian who really loves the Lord will feel the longing to be in His presence.

Fortunately we all have the hope that someday we will be. I don't mean hope as far as "I hope it doesn't rain on our picnic", or "I hope i don't run out of gas before I get to the gas station." (something that might be)

Bur we have a hope which is actually an "assurance" (a promise that will be) that we will undoubtedly be in His presence.

That is something we can all look forward to with great anticipation.; September 27, 2007 at 3:38 PM
Anonymous said...: I like the new look.; September 28, 2007 at 11:20 AM
Unknown said...: Interesting blog...i have made this analogy myself and now i am in a long distance relationship. I think that the success of a long distance relationship is a great reflection of you ability to have a great relationshi with the Lord at a distance. It is hard though, to keep up both relationships at a distance, but completely possible.; October 5, 2008 at 6:10 AM
Unknown said...: I completely agree with you blog and have used the same analogy to explain to my friends why a long distance relationship can work. Now I find myself in one. Sometimes the longing to be together is hard, and the longing to be with our Lord is also hard, but it is completely possible. In fact, it is a joy to see the relationship develop when two people are in different continents and are passionately pursuing each other, the Lord, and their dreams.; October 5, 2008 at 6:12 AM

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Quotes from my Senior Patron

-Clive Staples Lewis-

"The Love of knowledge is a kind of madness."

The Problem of Pain

"We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which he will not be satisfied until it has a certain character."

Mere Christianity - (Pg. 31)

"This is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it, and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies."

The Problem of Pain - C.S. Lewis (Pg. 31)

"What would really satisfy us would be a God who said anything we happened to like doing, what does it matter so long as they are contented? We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven - a senile benevolence who, as they say, liked to see young people enjoying themselves, and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, a good time was had by all."

"If we wish to be rational, not now and then, but constantly, we must pray for the fit of faith, for the power to go on believing not in the teeth of reason but in the teeth of lust and terror and jealousy and boredom and indifference that which reason, authority, or experience, or all three, have once delivered to us for truth."

Mere Christianity - (P.g. 139-140)

"It is not reason that takes away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other... Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your ganging moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know by experience..."

A Grief Observed - (P.g. 9-10)

"I once read the sentence 'I lay awake all night with toothache, thinking about toothache and about lying awake.' That's true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer."

Mere Christianity - (P.g. 7)

"It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table."

Mere Christianity - (P.g. 32)

"In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth-only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. Most of us have got over the pre-war wishful thinking about international politics. It is time we did the same about religion."

Mere Christianity - (P.g. 56-57)

"Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something mush harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person-and he would not need it."