On my way home the other day, I was sitting at the last stoplight where the highway meets the car dealers when I was struck with an overwhelming sense of Nothing.

There was nothing around me. Thousands of dollars worth of automobiles and petrol and a Wal-Mart full of goods and banks and restaurants and - nothing. I looked at the people in the cars beside me (yes, I'm a people-watcher) and wondered: which of these finds himself surrounded by nothing, and which of these looks at the stores and cars and banks and gasoline and sees everything? I wanted to jump out of the car there and bang on everyone's window. "Hey! Do you see this? It's nothing! Listen to me!"

In my search for an article to analyse in an essay for Logic, I googled "end of the world" just to see what turned up and found the predictions about 2012. Yes, the world is going to end in 2012 - just ask ancient Mayan calendars and ancient Egyptian soothsayers and NASA scientists with their sunflare predictions (am I the only one finding it ironic that hokey predictions are being paired with Grand and Intellectual (that is, Modern) Scientific ones?). Well--that's not what I wanted to tell those people. (I also didn't want to sell them my fifteen books on why it will end and how to prepare, the latter of which coincidentally involves my End Of The World survival kits. Money-making scheme much?)

I don't really care if the world ends in 2012 (although I don't give it much value; there is that little matter of God promising not to destroy the whole earth again, which is something the leading predictors of the 2012 movement think will/should happen, or the matter of the Bible saying Christ will come as a "thief in the night," which doesn't exactly mean something predictable by soothsayers and modern scientists). The point is, it's ending sometime - and chances are it won't be dramatic. The world will end for everyone--not with the sun spitting fire onto the earth and obliterating life, but in the slow, torturous chipping away of time until blink! your life is over. You are dead. All the cars and possessions and money are Nothing. If the afterlife is your first introduction to the eternal worthlessness of the thousands of dollars surrounding the stoplight, where are you but with the man who built himself an idol, bowed down to it and said "you made me!", only meeting the true Maker after death when he could no longer suppress the truth?

A few weeks ago, I heard the pastor of our old church preach on Isaiah 31-32. He said something that struck me: what you hope for determines what you pray for. He pointed the listener to the Lord's prayer. When we hope for material things such as food and drink, we pray accordingly--Give us this day our daily bread. There is nothing wrong with such a prayer, but we are called to something beyond that. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

Decide to be discontent with the world, Pastor Shea said. Here's another way of putting it: I don't wanna gain the whole world and lose my soul (no, I couldn't resist...). Or as the apostle Paul says: consider everything as a loss compared to a treasure unsurpassed in worth: knowing Christ.

What you hope for determines what you pray for, so one might assume that what you pray for shows what you hope for. What are you praying for? What am I praying for? Honestly... I pray for (No-)things. I pray for my own comfort, my own ease of conscience and lifestyle. Kingdom prayers (thy Kingdom come! thy Will be done!) are in short supply. I do not have a Kingdom-hoping heart.

And so I say--preach--plead with myself: Heu (hey you)! Soul! Decide to be discontent with Nothing (the world). Pursue absolute contentment in Everything (God). Don't hope for the gain of Nothing (the world) and thus pray for Nothing at the loss of Something (your soul) and Everything (fellowship with God and His Kingdom).

What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ. (Phil. 3:8)

1 Comment

1. MJC on May 10, 2009 at 11:15 PM

   Then we are one on this issue, as I cannot help but to think daily on the pursuit of nothing, and how that pursuit - when it momentarily wins me over as it is want to do - affects my relationship with my Lord and God. It's a painful thing to acknowledge, but I acknowledge it every day and place my hope in Christ for something otherwise, every day.