approval suck up

Hi Jesus, good morning. If I try to look for anything specific to say I draw a blank. Like a prisoner locked in a room unable to see the sun. I can stare at the locks on my cell and will them to open. But you are the jailer and am still serving time. I have finished with raging and ranting against the system. I am done. But don’t expect me to play kiss ass just because Paul said it. But that’s self-delusional posturing, since I hate to rub the grain of culture in any other direction but approval. For a time I sought approval from my peers, at other times approval from Rock n Roll, at yet other times approval from the intellectual community, and then of course played the classic rebel card and thrust away all these approval seeks as vain if not wimpish. (Approval seeking has one undercurrent dragging this ship of dreams – a sense of a lack of legitimacy.) I haven’t quested for approval from parents, brother, sister, wife, son or daughter or from family. At this I run smack dab into the question – what about your approval?

You call me lord, lord and expect to be rewarded? Are you doing the will of the Father?

And what is the will of Father lord? Nobody seems very clear on that bit – all the teachers who run the highway home. Telesales pitches are full of how glorious and the rest of the blahs you are. Somewhere along the line I dashed that picture perfect figurine portrayed from the pulpit and since then I have been crying. I cried myself to sin. My tears hollowed out my soul and left me empty. A resounding gong and a clanging cymbal of 1 Corinthians Ch 13 fame. Loveless. Or at least it feels that way.

Didn’t listen to your wise men sir. Storin water in the cisterns? I pushed the envelope on altruism and earned the time. Somebody will say that this prayer is too overloaded with ‘I’. It is. Am a sinner lord. Scared to say – I repent. Scared that I say it more from the love of hearing my own pretension at righteousness and not actually repenting.

And yet the will of the Father is as plain as day: Jesus, Jesus, be thou glorified!