"Who was it?" my husband asked.
"My friend from Bahrain," I answered. I'd just hung up the phone.
"She ok?" he asked.
"She's fine." I sighed, hesitating. "There's a job opening there she wants us to consider."
I went on to discribe the set up of our dreams: both of us teachers. 6 weeks vacation on top of the 7 weeks of summer. Paid plain fare to the island. The school would pay our rent for a 1 bedroom flat. 2 trips home to America during the year. Full medical coverage. A chance to learn fluent Arabic. And - we'd be living right in the middle of the world. All the things we'd been trying to get at for years wouldn't be so far away any more.
"Wow..." he said. "When do they want us to start?"
"Next week," I said.
We both laughed. There was no way this would work out and we knew it. We sighed heavy sighs and went back to our now very American-seeming chicken 'stir-fry'.
That night I layed awake in bed, a little miffed with God for taunting me with stuff like this. "I can't take it any more," I silently said. "It eats me up just knowing that the Great Wall is there and I'm not walking it. The Camino de Santiago is peopled with pilgrims and I'm not one of them. Someone's climbing in and out of the Grand Canyon, and it isn't me. Will I ever get those caligraphy brushes from China? Will I ever see the Himalayas? Will I ever make it back to the Louve? How will I ever read Faust in the original if I can't go to Germany to learn German? You're keeping me down God - when's my life going to get started? I never get anything I want..."
The next day it was hard to go to work. But when I missed my home-bound buss I was left with 20 minutes to sit and think. You can guess where my mind went. I started praying again, telling God I just didn't understand. Would he ever let me travel? Or even if he never allowed me to leave Germantown again, could I at least have a family? Or could I at least have my husband home at night? Or could I at least get that new shirt I want before winter set in?
Then I felt a question: "What's the purpose of your life?" Well, my internal mouth shut very quickly. I understood. I was feeling a little unfulfilled - and was looking for fulfillment in all the wrong places. It makes perfect sense that God would withhold from me thing that I may idolize while he teaches me to find my full satisfaction in him alone.
Solomon came to mind. Here was a guy who had everything I could ever want. He's discribed as the wisest and richest man in history - and he was a king, so he was powerful. He used his smarts, money and power to dabble in just about everything from women to material pleasure. He'd totally turned his back on God to run the gambit of what the world has to offer - and at the end of it all? We know what he said, because the phrase has slipped into proverbial history: All is vanity. After tasting everything other than God, Solomon comes to a conclusion. It's the same one I had to remind myself of before I took all my unsatied desires and spun off down the same path he did.
"The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." -Ecclesiastes 12:13
I don't need anything besides what I already have to fear God and keep his commandments, so I'm not being 'kept down' at all. I need to remind myself that when I begin to desire things of the world, that route has already been tried by many before me, who have come to the same conclusion Solomon did. Those things won't fulfill them because they aren't their purpose in life - seeking God and obeying him is the whole duty of man, not just a part. And that, friends, is the end of the matter, and will never change.
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