Maybe We Need To Leave

"Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons."
— Donald Miller (Through Painted Deserts)
 
 
Coming back home to Festus is a strange experience for me. Since I'm in Festus an average of 4 or 5 times a year, there are both gradual and abrupt changes. It seems like every time I come back, things are different, but there is still a progression of change. And many of the changes have been pretty tough at times.
 
I'm not a good prayer. From what I've read in the Bible about prayer, it seems to be all about persistence. We are to pray without ceasing, and Jesus even tells a parable in Luke 11:5-8 about how someone will give you what you ask because of your boldness, and not just because the person is your friend (Read it if you haven't. I think about prayer a lot differently because of this parable). Most of the time, I'm pretty inconsistent with prayer time, and I'm also usually not all that bold.
 
But some of the times I have been most bold and consistent is when praying for friends who used to be living for God, but have since drifted away. It's so weird to have people who I once looked up to spiritually that now want nothing to do with God.
 
It makes my faith feel fake. It exposes my own weakness, as it is so difficult to bring up the topic of God anymore to them. It has taken a town that was once a place of spiritual inspiration and turned it into a desert. I know God is faithful, but it can be hard to believe here.
 
I'm glad I get to come home and be around family. I'm glad I get to hang out with friends that are still here in town. I'm glad I get to go back to Faith Baptist Church and see people there who have taught me a lot about God. Those things make it worth coming back. But I'm also glad that I'm only here for short periods of time....because I would suffocate if I had to stay here too long.
 
I think that's one reason many people drift away from God. Life becomes stale and boring, and we lose a focus. Sometimes, we have to seek adventure to save ourselves from boredom, which is probably one of the devil's most potent weapons. We start to feel like our life is just as good without God. We question what the point of it all is and go back to our old life.

In the song "This Week The Trend" by Relient K, these words are found:

 

"And I just want to get mugged at knifepoint. To get cut enough to wake me up. Cause I know that I don't want to die sitting around watching my life go by."

 

One of my weaknesses is that I can get bored easily. Perhaps that is a weakness of yours also. Fortunately, God is strong in our weakness, and can used our boredom to cause us to leave our comfort zones and chase after God. Let's not be afraid to get mugged or cut up a bit. Death by lukewarm boredom is a far more cowardly death than anything another human can do to us.

There's nothing wrong with staying in your hometown....but many of us were never meant to stay.