There is more

I felt myself drowning and losing the will to fight. No matter how hard I tried, nothing seemed to be working. All of a sudden, I sensed that there was no God. All I could see was blank nothingness as if I had been in a colourful dream but reality is bland, take it or leave.

I considered leaving it because there was no point. At the end, all will be forgotten. My name, my accomplishments, my family and friends will be more than lost. It will be as if we never existed as those who remain to remember us will also be forgotten. We should have never existed in the first place.

Deeper and deeper I drowned. Then as sudden as the flood, a metal bar appeared in front of me. I reached out and held it.

And the journey began.

At a critical point, where I hung on the balance of belief and unbelief, I watched a ballerina release herself. There, holding my phone, my faith in the spiritual world was restored.

My mind had been filled with images of bodies on top of bodies, over more bodies. Matter on matter. Remains of the pandemic. Remains of greed and hatred over the years. I struggled to see us as anything more than just animal matter. What is the point of it all? Yet, ballet… .

The preaching that aimed to encourage, the quotes and writings of fathers of faith helped but did not get there. All the days I spent philosophising , considering the works and thoughts of skeptics, ended nowhere.

It was the arc motions of that dance, slow and stirring, that enlightened me. Only gods could deliberately create such beauty. How could I not see this? Surely we must have the breath of God.

From our depths, we create out of nothing. We are more than just matter. We are spirit and soul.

There is more to us

Crap, this road is narrow. It’s so hard.

I know Jesus said it would be but really, it is narrow. The only thing keeping me here right now is that promise of narrowness. If this one promise is true, then surely, perhaps, maybe all the other promises are true. Anyway, let’s keep going.

I am convinced that anyone that decides to walk here deserves a medal just for making that decision in the first place. It is much easier, less demanding to have faith in nothing – the wide and open road – than to find yourself with faith in Jesus.

Faith in God takes careful watching of step. It’s a road of constant self-discipline and subdued pride. Self-dignity is rolled in the mud and you are reduced to nothing. Plus, there are limited responses to the affairs of life; after all, there are no turns or curves or bends. Just straight on.

It’s a challenge unfit for the most grilled of athletes, and it lasts a lifetime. But why do I bother? I trudge along on sore feet because I know there is more.

But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it
(Matthew 7:14)

Forget road. Now, I am talking mountain, sharp rocks and boulders, burning sun and ice cold air. I am thirsty. The higher I climb, the harder it is to breathe.

There are two choices. The first is to keep going. The second is to give in to doubt and sink into the valley of despair. There’s no ‘let me stay where I am’ option; sooner or later I’ll find myself back at the bottom. Trust me, I’ve tried it before.

It’s climb or fall. So, I ascend, fixing my eyes on the summit before me. What if after all this sweat there’s nothing at the top? Honestly, I’m struggling to see anything up there.

Right now, what I know is that there is a grace that helps me climb against what my eyes can or cannot see. Every time I sit to reason and try to turn back, it tells me, “There is more”.

I look up to the mountains— does my help come from there?
(Psalm 121:1)

Several times, I felt a hand try to lift me up but I wasn’t convinced the hand existed. Often, a word of encouragement whispered but I thought, “Perhaps it is just my imagination, an element of my preconditioning”.

Then I heard a voice say:

I sang a dirge, you didn’t want. I played something else, you still didn’t want. There are always reasons not to believe.

I knew it referred to somewhere in the Bible when Jesus was talking about John the Baptist. I had to go search.

John came as a typical ‘Man of God’. He lived in seclusion, didn’t touch alcohol, had habits that set him apart from ‘normal human beings’, and he was brutally vocal against the sins of the government and leading figures of the day. The sort of man I would feel the need to clean up and be on my best behaviour to meet.

Jesus is quite the opposite. He loved living with people, he drank and feasted, and took anyone as a friend – sex workers, religious leaders and Roman colonial officials alike.

John came like a funeral song. Jesus came with a disco ball. Yet, they preached the same message of repentance, purity and love. And both were not believed. John is a crazy, rude man. He is too mad to be from God. Jesus is a drunk. How on earth could we listen to him?

There are always reasons to not believe. There will never be an undisputable answer on this earth that will satisfy all my doubts. That is the nature of my human heart. Still, whether or not I believe, it doesn’t change anything.

There is still so much more.

“To what can I compare the people of this generation?” Jesus asked. “How can I describe them? They are like children playing a game in the public square. They complain to their friends,

‘We played wedding songs,
    and you didn’t dance,
so we played funeral songs,
    and you didn’t weep.’

For John the Baptist didn’t spend his time eating bread or drinking wine, and you say, ‘He’s possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man, on the other hand, feasts and drinks, and you say, ‘He’s a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and other sinners!’ But wisdom is shown to be right by the lives of those who follow it.”

(Luke 7:31-35)

This was initially published as a four-part series in January 2021. (Thought it would make sense to put it all in one post).

Read also: Doubt (from the book ‘To be like you’)

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