The Pursuit of Truth

Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth.

For some, I wonder how difficult that must be: to engage their spirit- in anything! What does it mean to engage your spirit?

I know for me, it means being able to face myself and to recognize, if only vaguely, what I see. To reach down inside myself and be familiar with the feelings, the thoughts, the emotions, the very character of myself. I believe that for many, this is a very difficult thing to do.

This morning my son showed me his blog where he discussed being able to look into another's eyes and see- truly know- who they are. And that for some, this was extremely difficult. They cannot bear to look into another's eyes, let alone to their own spirit.

I have often felt that society has encouraged me to ignore or suppress my spirit. I was to look as much like someone other than me as possible. Added to that, if I looked at what was deep inside of me- who I was, what I felt and believed- it was frightening. If others knew those thoughts, feelings or beliefs, they might disagree- they might look down on me or worse- those things deep inside of me might actually be wrong. And if I engaged my spirit in these things, I would have to deal with all that. It was easier to not look- to disengage.

Over the past year and a half, I have come to realize that we all have "wrong" deep down inside. And that if we don't face it- head on- there is no peace, no life, no joy. There is only this striving to be like everyone else (who in reality are all striving in vain as well). And because some of the things we have to face when we do face ourselves head on are so ugly, so difficult, so depressing and shameful, it's best to face them with Someone who can do something about them.

The verse doesn't say to fix all these things, to change them in our pursuit of truth. It says that our worship and adoration of God must be done while "engaged"- in touch, involving our spirit where all these things that make us who we are are lodged. We come before God in all our shame and all our glory, knowing who we are, presenting the bad, good and the ugly.

And we pursue Truth.

And when we find It, It changes us.