Restless Souls
6 min read
3 But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, “Go up and meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and ask them, ‘Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going off to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?’ ”
— 2 Kings 1:3
I spent my life desiring meaning and truth. And I formulated my own truth of sorts according to my own experience and emotions and personality. And my own personal truth worked for me just fine until it didn’t.
My own personal truth worked for me just fine until I faced struggles that made me want to run away into complete anonymity. My own personal truth worked for me just fine until I started to feel trapped in a box that the sin of the world put me in—a box that was shaped by my mistakes and not my hopes. My own personal truth worked for me just fine until it started to dawn on me that no one in the world cared about my own personal truth at all.
I’m pretty sure that, sooner or later, everyone comes face to face with this struggle against their own personal truth. Most people seem to do a pretty remarkable job of hiding that struggle. Some better than others.
Some don’t even realize they are having this struggle because their own personal truth seems so “true” to them. It’s all they know. For my part, I had a terrible time of hiding that struggle—meaning, I don’t think that I could hide it very well. I always felt compelled to share my mind, caring more to share my mind than whether I was right or wrong (another reason I was always a bit of an outsider).
In our pursuit of personal truth, we have to deal with the reality of death. As we seek personal truth, we all have our Baal-Zebubs that we consult. And even Christians do this. Us Christians consult our Beel-Zebubs when Jesus is standing right in front of us.
When Jesus said, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6), that doesn’t leave room for another way, truth, or life.
But maybe in some ways, we all need to embark on that journey of finding personal truth, and we all need to enter into that struggle with our personal truth. Humans are restless creatures, and we are prone to wander. But it is in the restless wandering that we can find the Way and the Truth and the Life (Acts 17:27).
At some point, we all have to settle into our personal truth. God help the person who desires the restless wandering more than settling into truth. And Lord help the person whose personal truth lands on one of the many (or all) of the Beel-Zebubs in this world, instead of Christ and Him crucified, resurrected, and returning.
We all have seasons of being restless wanderers where we chase after Beel-Zebubs. May the Lord bring Elijahs into our lives to point us to the Way and the Truth and the Life, the Word made flesh. And may our wandering spirits find rest in Christ.
Father, Your love never fails. Yet my restless soul has failed Your love time and time again. Make me dislike my wandering nature. Make me find joy and thrills as I rest in You. In Jesus’s name. Amen.