Beyond Smooth Sailing: The Search for Heartfelt Satisfaction

For the better part of our lives, don’t we often feel as if we are just in pursuit of wrinkle-free days? Or is our whole need in another direction, such as heart satisfaction?

You know how this goes; your waking is filled with the fragrance of freshly brewed coffee and a backdrop of melodic songbirds, all while the family is still fast asleep. So far, the fresh, clean page of life you’re looking to fill out with top-quality events to turn in at the end of the day is off to a featured start.

Leaving behind the lovely landscape and white picket fences, you enter…traffic. Without comment, at least you’ve arrived safely (pestered, shaky, and overwhelmed) to work. No one made the coffee. The copy machine is out of toner (again). You didn’t hit save on that PowerPoint presentation before the computer did its updating overnight. You’re already noticing deep creases in your once pristine page of life. The professional abilitiy to maintain control is under duress. Smooth sailing gave way, long ago. And so far, this day has tanked.

As you head back out into traffic, your long, exhausting, crumpled mess of a day isn’t the best conversation you’d want to have at dinner, but you feel the need to just unload—as does everyone else from their bad day. Now you’re thinking “Wow, well, that pattern didn’t work out.”

Somewhere in pursuit of life, we’d learned this vocation of striving after a wrinkle-free existence and the ability to master our bearings or at least keep up appearances, is the mastery of a well-lived life. [If this is you, please read on] As you age, and/ or mature in life, you’ve come to find that process is not true.

What is true of all of us is a need for real, heartfelt satisfaction. Whether that’s to be a proud parent, community member, accomplished author, or whatever your talent or skill is. Most of the time, and many or most don’t realize it, what our hearts desire is… knowledge. No, I don’t mean the need to fill our heads with seemingly more useless information but to have more than the greater grasp of the “why” of life. One that can really touch the “Who.” (John 20:27)

So much of our energies, and even the prayers you and I have expended so far in this pursuit, have been around the “why is this happening to me” as well as, our daily “whats”. Such as, what can I add to my life to make it better; to make it easier. While we pursue an illusive “best sheet-of-life” paper each day, we’re left holding onto nothing more than creases, crumples, and deep folds in a life that’s patterned after a belief that isn’t true.

So how much peace do me and you have to show at the end of the day? Whether the situations were horrible or not, do we have peace? Can we really rest well at night? Even before we got out in traffic we hit an impasse, and now must turn to the Who. Who will help. Who will rescue. Forget the paper, You and I need a Person. (Christ) Not just the type of person he says he is, but the pattern of who we assert He is (Mark 8:29-31) is significant if you are a Christ-follower, and I hope you are.

Christ, when He led His Disciples, engaged them in regular exchanges (feedings, healings, storms, parables) to learn him, but they misunderstood him the most. Each of us has blind spots and vulnerabilities, leaving us susceptible to misconceptions, self-defense, and a need for dignity. We too, are asking the Who, What, and Why questions of life.

The source for your need to know is in the great “I Am”. The Gospel of John lends a pattern to draw from Him (John 6:63) and not out from yourself, for your every need; your new direction. He can be our Sufficiency. Should you be lost, or feel lost He says “I am the Way”, or I am the Light of the world”.

If you’re in need of leadership, or to be led in a decision, or in need of being taken care of (welfare), He says of Himself “I am the Good Shepherd”. Our sitting in the presence of these 7 references laid out in this Gospel, apprehending the thoughts; ingesting them like food, and appropriating these key terms are vital to your life’s walk.

Christ is purposely leading you into each of these difficulties mentioned above, that you might come to know Him (Phil. 3:10) as the Gate, or the Bread, or the Vine – as a sustained way amidst, or against the difficulties. A steady way through the perils, the traffic, the frustrations that come from actually living in this world.

The frustrating pattern you and I ought to have learned by now is that the more you try to get life out from yourself, the more difficulty you have found. Gone are the days when you and I should have to struggle for such existence of this perfect life. For now, hope and unwrinkled existence can be found in Him. So maybe we should cancel our subscription to that wrinkle-free magazine that offers nothing more than disappointment, unrealized expectations of others, and the need to achieve—no matter the cost.

Jesus knew the troubles you would face and are facing today. He offers the idea that, in Him, there is peace (John 16:33). Promises are hard to understand, just as was with the disciples. But hope that can be seen is not really hope after all. (Rom. 8:24) Could it be that our drive for all those stress-free days is just to have a provable existence? Who do you prove it to? Will they be impressed?

God doesn’t reward you for all that you prevented from happening from the impending storm, (Matt. 8:25-27) but how much of the Son did you have in the boat of your life in that unsustainable moment?       Thanks for reading. Best day ever!