centre.

I've been feeling the strangeness, lately, of having my life centred around a relationship with God that is so clear to me- yet invisible and even ridiculous to most of the people I know. When faith is compelled by reasonable evidence, met by indescribable and obvious blessing, it's a beautiful thing... But I'm tired of my friends seemingly not being able to see these things at all, despite how actually important they are. I care a lot, and it can be confusing. I think that sometimes I try to see things from the perspective of others' experiences so much that I forget the simple reality I'm genuinely allowed to rest in.

If I surrender deeply to the things I can't dispute, how can taking them seriously be considered fundamentalist or naive? What am I expected to believe? The reality is intricate, not to be waved off with unnoticed double standards or considered undesirable. So when friends seem to engage with all these things and then dismiss them as an emotional, social or aesthetic choice- or misunderstand the nature of them, even when genuinely peering into them- it's just surreal. It hurts, it can be awkward and it's discouraging. Has something so large ever seemed so invisible?

God has revealed Himself to our generation in a way that asks faith and desire of us, even whilst giving us the grounds for it. I feel more and more that belief is not only about seeing things on the surface of reality and affirming them, but rather being willing to be stirred when God asks if we want anything to do with the kind of goodness that is His. Willing to be bound to this love, though it costs everything I thought was worth my desire. Willing to study, have my small perspectives challenged and have integrity with belief, and yet to surrender to what isn't comfortable. To acknowledge that we aren't being judged, but welcomed and desired, far beyond what we deserve. That however we imagine Him, God is desirable, faithful and good, not to be treated as worthless.

I need to remember the nature of the reality I walk in, even whilst trying to stay in touch with how others see it. To know that we are all subjects of this king, like it or not. To find the energy and the thankfulness to be lost not in what is imagined (the everyday, the mere undisputed), but in reality's fullness and real meaning. To be able to keep speaking about what I have found to be real, whether or not I know how to make that clear. For my heart to adore my God as king; for Him to be like the one I come home to, who is more real than anything else I find or am found in, because He is.