As one with introverted tendencies, I tend to “live in my head” quite a bit. I ponder stuff, think about the future, play out scenarios in my mind. That tends to be both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing insofar as it enables me to think things through, to “count the cost”. It’s a curse in that I can have a tendency to visualize things at the expense of actually doing things.

Another – perhaps bigger – issue is that those scenarios in my head often tend to be predicated on bases that aren’t particularly helpful: based either on my current circumstances and trajectory, or based how I’d like things to play out via on my own desires. The first tends to lead to hopelessness. The second tends to lead to a temporary delusion that I can ultimately be in control, that I can somehow bring about a future where I’m at the center of esteem, with plenty of material comfort and security.

I’m learning – ever so slowly – that I need to spend less time envisioning scenarios and more time simply trying to live faithfully day by day, acting on God’s direction as best as I can decipher it in my fallen state. God knows my needs, and my dreams. If I can learn to truly trust that my needs will be provided, and that my dreams will be refined in the fire of God’s love for me – that in doing so I will receive “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20) – I can live each day with a sense of peace. Even joy. Joy has been a fairly elusive thing for me, for many years. Left to my own devices, I tend to revert to a stance of sober stoicism.

But once in a while, my soul will get a glimpse from somewhere that I can only refer to as “beyond”. A sense of surety. A brief glimmer of something resembling joy. Most often that comes in the context of reading, studying or hearing scripture – timeless truths echoing from eternity. I’m working to better tune my soul to those frequencies.

 

Mark Heard – Tip of My Tongue

There’s an oasis in the heat of the day
There’s a fire in the chill of night
A turnabout in circumstance makes each a hell in its own right
I’ve been boxed-in in the lowlands, in the canyons that think
I’ve been pushed to the brink of the precipice and dared not to blink
I’ve been confounded in the whirlwind of what-ifs and dreams
I’ve been burned by the turning of the wind back upon my own flames

(Chorus)
Knock the scales from my eyes
Knock the words from my lungs
I want to cry out
It’s on the tip of my tongue

I’ve seen through the walls of this kingdom of dust
Felt the crucial revelation
But the broad streets of the heart, and the day-to-day
Meet at a blind intersection
I don’t want to be lonely, I don’t want to feel pain
I don’t want to draw straws with the sons of Cain
You can take it as a prayer if You’ll remember my name
You can take it as the penance of a profane saint

(Chorus)

There’s an oasis in the heat of the day
There’s fire in the chill of night
And when I know them both, I’ll know Your love
I will feel it in the twilight
As circumstance comes crashing through my walls like a train
Or like a chorus from the mountains or the ocean floor
Like the wind-burst of bird wings taking flight in a hard rain
Or like a mad dog on the far side of Dante’s door

(Chorus)