Sometimes

Listen to this while you're reading this post. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDj44n5bjWU. Start it over if it ends before you're done.

I learned something tonight. I learned that when someone asks you for a cigarette, you should always give them one for the road as well. My dad told me one time that the reason that people chase wealth is that they hope to be able to reproduce the moments of happiness they've experienced as often as they want. Or something like that. I thought he was right, and I still think that. I watched a storm come in tonight from my seat at Starbucks. The whole sky was filled up with a storm head, and it was pulsing with lightning. Pulsing is a strange word. I don't like it, but I couldn't think of any other word. It sounds like the title of a book of terrible love poems. Almost as bad as the book of love poems that John Piper released entitled "Velvet Steel". Come on, dude. I've written lots of terrible love poems, and thats because I don't know what it is, but I've already said that before. I've also read terrible love poems, and I think they were terrible because the person writing them also didn't know what love was. Or, the kind of love they experienced was the kind they would sell on a clothing rack next to clothes that already have tears and holes in them. Nobody wants to wait for anything anymore. Neither do I. Anyway, the storm kept coming closer, flashing on and off more often, but it wouldn't rain. There are times, when you long for something, that you wish to God that it would rain, but it doesn't. It didn't rain tonight either. At least not yet. Lately, I've been overwhelmed by longing. I don't know why. It's not for a certain thing, its just for. It's the kind that makes you fidgety and unsettled, like when you go to your grandparent's house alone for the weekend and you realize that there are 3 days of slow time ahead of you. I love my grandparents, but when I was young it was always too quiet. Also, they always told me stories about people I wouldn't ever know, even if I met them. Another thing I learned tonight is that God does what He wants. Recently, it seems like He doesn't want to do much of anything, like when you eat too much bread in the heat or find out that the girl you thought you loved is getting married to someone else. I don't look down streets like I used to. It's not because I don't like streets, its just that I don't think theres much waiting for me down there. Turns around corners are just turns right now, they aren't chances. I wondered tonight if Jesus would give someone two cigarettes instead of one, like I did. My mom wouldn't think so. She would tell me that Jesus wouldn't give anyone any cigarettes, and that He certainly wouldn"t smoke them. I'm not so sure about that, but what do I know.
         I've spent a lot of my life hoping that something would happen. I used to ask why questions all the time, like "why does Grandma always put butter on my peanut butter and jelly sandwich?", "why did the horse bite my hand after he ate the apple?", and "why can't I have what I want?" The fact is, God does what He wants to do. It's nice, I guess, that He at least tells us He's doing good things. I used to worry about that too, mainly because I knew plenty of people that said that they were doing good things that ended up not being so good, like whoever it is out there that makes fruit cake. Now, I know I won't be able to figure out what it is He's up to. In the mean time, He sends along moments of things I like. Not all the time, and not whenever I want them, just sometimes. I can demand until I'm blue in the face, but it won't change anything. I've never been blue in the face. I think I tried once, because my mom or my grandmother or some woman said that to me one time, and I wanted to test if it were true. I missed oxygen though, and I missed it before its absence made any change to my face. I've started thinking that temporal hope is really the understanding that God has sent moments that we've liked before, and that He will do it again. That's why I gave the delivery guy two cigarettes instead of one. I wanted him to enjoy that one, and know that there was another one waiting. I think that's why the horse bit my hand after he ate the apple I gave him, too. He didn't want the apple to end. I don't think I'll see the end of longing until I get to heaven. I used to hope that nothing happened when I died, because heaven sounded boring. I didn't want to listen to worship music for ten thousand times ten thousand years, I could hardly take it for 45 minutes. That hasn't changed, but I am looking forward to heaven now. I think that's because C.S. Lewis said it will be exactly as it ought to be. It's the same with my life. I want, and want to avoid, all sorts of things. When it's over, though, I think God will have made it exactly as it ought to have been.