The week ended like it started, with broken spokes. Hopefully I’ll get the bike working and be back on my way. Ending this week in Eagle Mountain Utah, visiting some of Laura’s friends. The week started in waiting for a bike shop to open in Burley, which it did on Tuesday, and the guy fixed my spokes. The repair lasted a week so I’m thankful. The next few days were wilderness days in Idaho and then Utah. Some neat camping spots in the middle of nowhere. I never ran out of water, since I learned in Oregon to carry a lot in the heat. I took a spa day at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, which was well worth it. There was a 17 head shower. It was like showering in a car wash. That and a massage and I feel pretty good. There were lots of great bike paths in the Salt Lake area, which was 100+ miles long, I believe. Nice to get away from some of the traffic. I didn’t take a lot of pictures, since the scenery over the last week wasn’t spectacular. Not that I’m complaining though.
The hours and days of solitude and quiet reflection have got me thinking about comforts of body and spirit. And the backwards way I think about things. A life without trouble and suffering, without temptation, and without trial, is a dangerous life. I seek out bodily comforts all of the time. Try to have a nice job so that I can live in a comfortable place, with time off to relax and make myself feel good. I look forward to good food to make me happy. I want to go to beautiful places under the guise of “experiencing God’s creation”, or some other lame excuse. But what will the person tell you who has gone to every beautiful country, tasted every good food, lived on the most comfortable beds? Will they tell you that only NOW are they satisfied? Maybe so, but I can’t believe a person that tells me that. Better for me to sit on a painful saddle getting baked in the sun all day, and to meditate on the comforts of the spirit. When I am watching a fun movie and eating good food, I am giving all of my attention to something which lasts barely any longer than a breath.
It is better for a man to be obscure and to attend to his salvation than to neglect it and work miracles… …Why wish to see what you are not permitted to have? “The world passes away and the concupiscence thereof.” Sensual craving sometimes entices you to wander around, but when the moment is past, what do you bring back with you save a disturbed conscience and heavy heart? A happy going often leads to a sad return, a merry evening to a mournful dawn. Thus, all carnal joy begins sweetly but in the end brings remorse and death.
Imitation of Christ
These thoughts and meditations are all part of what I feel I am actually witnessing for the first time in my life. It’s a piece of wisdom everybody talks about, but I have yet to see a single person who understands it well enough to describe it, or a single person who lives this way. I do not have understanding of it, but I am starting to see it. What I am talking about is the idea of what it truly means to “live in the present”. I could write a few chapters of a book with all the thoughts and experiences I have been having in regards to this. I will try to explain, but I am only in the beggining stages of understanding. One key I learned from backtracking my route last week. I left Burley and rode out into the desert. It was an unknown. The big things I think about in those moments are “Where is the next water? What hills are there? Is there a shoulder to ride on? Where will I sleep?” But then I backtracked for a few days to get my bike fixed, and when I rode that same 20 miles, I knew the answers to those questions. The first time, I didn’t know the future, but I concerned myself with it. The second time, in a sense, I knew the future. But it didn’t matter, the outcome was the same. If I had not worried the first time, it would have been the same outcome as the second time. God knew the path before me, just as He knows the future of all of our endevors. And the thing is, I regretted my time worrying. That’s time I could have spent enjoying the spiritual comforts and communion with Christ. This isn’t some guilt ridden religious thinking, it’s really how I felt. And I feel some form of this regularly right now. I look ahead so much. I think I need to learn the lesson of not looking ahead first, because the lesson of not looking back to the past is currently out of my reach. I’m not there yet.
But the spirit endures, and the body does not. In Matthew 22 it says:
Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
When I spend my life seeking the various comforts and accomplishments, and seeking to fulfil my own needs and desires, I completely miss out on spending my life, every waking moment, in loving God. It’s easy to learn to love your neighbors, because you can see them all the time, even when you don’t want to. And if you forgive them for playing loud music and doing all the other annoying things neighbors do (as I need forgiveness as well), you will love them. Because if you love God first, love to His precious children flows as naturally as water flows downhill. But to LOVE God. What greater purpose is there? If you can’t see it, and I say this with compassion and love intended, you are like an entitled toddler who thinks he deserves to be a college graduate without going through the growth and putting in the time to learn. I know because I’ve been there. I am there. Spiritual growth starts at the very bottom, and there are no shortcuts. And even worse, you can go backwards. I know that from experience too.
This ties together because to live in the present is to love God. To live in the future or the past is to love self first. Love does not seek it’s own. Which is to say, putting your wants and needs first above love of God is to give yourself a false power over your own future, which you can’t even know. It’s like reading a fantasy book and believing it. And when you see that the book isn’t real, you are left with nothing but heartbreak. This is what I am seeing day by day. I don’t see the way out, I only see part of the problem.
I am grateful. To be without many of the comforts I am used to, I have more time to ponder on the love of God. Maybe I have immersed myself too deeply into materialistic American Christianity that I have been willing to admit to. Prosperity of body and of wealth and of comforts is truly so short lived. But the humble turning to God is the beggining of life itself. Life I hope to live.
Here are some pics from the week. Not particularly amazing. I barely cared to take any.
Updates on my trip 