Bread Crumbs and Pebbles

Why are you looking for love? Why are you still searching as if I'm not enough? Tell me where will you run, child, to where will you run?

I convinced my roommates to watch Gladiator with me the other night whilst we were working away on our Valentines. My friends laugh at me a little because I have a very weak gag reflex and  very little tolerance for real life blood or cuts or broken bones. And too, we watched Red Dawn over the summer... seriously, the scene where they make Peeta drink the blood from the deer.. I gagged 7 times and had tears streaming down my eyes... eww. 

The funny thing, though, is that some of my favorite movies tend to air a little on the gorry side. I mean, The Patriot, Mel Gibson... MMmm. I could watch that again. And Last of the Mohicans..wahh! ALL. Time. Favorite!  And, Gladiator, well, I love that one too. But I love the story... the heroism, the emotion, the fight... it really pulls me in. Red Dawn is just shooting and kids and Chris Hemsworth's abs...randomly. 

Anyways.. Gladiator... good movie. You should see it. The reason I bring it up is because there is this scene where he is in the arena and has dropped a couple bodies and the crowd is rather silent and he yells back at them, "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED??" I love that. Because I find a lot of depth in that statement, actually. 

I think you'd, hopefully, agree with me that watching gladiators slaughter each other in a colosseum is a really sick way of being entertained. Which brings out the irony when Russell Crowe does what he's not supposed to do, live, at the expense of those who weren't supposed to die, in some crazy blood bath. The crowd wanted to see him slaughtered and he, instead, kills off a handful of soldiers who were supposed to be impossible to defeat. They came to see death and they saw death. "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?"

I feel like all my media, electronics, apps, devices yell that at me often. At my fingertips I have The World. I have movies, news, social media, pictures, memes... everything the world has to offer and more often than not I find myself un-entertained. I sit there and think, "it's not enough. I am not satisfied." I think, as a Christian, Christ has made it to be that way. The World entertains, to distract from reality, but it does nothing. It entertains a void. That's it. 

I've said earlier that there is not much for me to do on the days I don't work as much. My options for "Entertainment" are:
Facebook
Instagram
USA Today News
Netflix

...I don't Netflix on my own. That's way too boring. Facebook only entertains in the 10 seconds it takes to check a notification and Instagram only goes as far as the new pictures to scroll through. The News usually has 20-30 articles to read and so that takes about 30 minutes and a lot of it is fluffy gossip that doesn't need to be read anyways. 

I am not entertained. I'm quite thankful, though, because it has forced me into sitting down with the Lord and reading my Bible and listening to sermons and being as productive as possible. 
I think the Lord is in total control of how well we are "entertained" by something. Like He can such switch it off and dangle a carrot of real substance in front of our face. And when we look at him, playfully dangling it in front of our face He asks, "Ready to follow me yet? Come with me, I just wanna show you something. Something good. Something better than this. Better than simply passing time."

Beth Moore once said, "In every wait there is a longing, or else it just a passing of time." And you can't just wait for The Next Big Thing. You miss a lot of presence when you constantly look past what you have for what could fulfill you next. If you're not content now, you won't be content in the next thing either. 

I think part of the reason I'd love to work sun-up to sun-down is because it would keep me busy and distracted and entertained. There is a point, though, when I have to surrender and ask God what is is that He intends to show me. But He is a patient God. Patient in waiting, patient in showing. There is no instant *snap fingers* fullfillment. God lays out the bread crumbs and invites you to follow the trail. There's a gingerbread house at the end...but we often just sit down, snack on the bread crumbs and then revert to eating pebbles in our laziness and acceptance of bland, tasteless, malnourishing substances set before us. 

C.S. Lewis said it best when he said, "Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

And we lay in the middle of the path with stomachaches from all the pebbles we've eaten and the world comes along and pokes us with sticks asking, "What is this? What is this child laying here? What a silly child to be so easily filled up on pebbles and bread crumbs.Would you like some chocolate, child? I mean, chocolate covered rocks, but you like rocks." And we stay there. Laying. Eating. Feeling sick. And we curl up in the fetal position and cry out the Lord, asking why we are so persecuted. The world laughs when we make effort to follow the next little trail of bread crumbs. Because the world knows we enjoy pebbles. But the pebbles weigh us down. They make it hard to digest the good stuff. They take up more room in our lives and offer nothing but misery and belly ache in return. 

You know what, though? We are the gladiators in the arena. "For we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered" And more often than not, we fail to fight back. We get checked and slashed at and spit on ..and we cry. Because we didn't anticipate this when we signed up for it. Someone told us Jesus did all the dying there was to be done and we get the easy peasy road. I mean, honestly... we really do get the easy-peasy road. Someone disagreeing with your facebook status is not exactly the same as getting your head chopped off in Asia. 
I'm not totally sure what my point is other than that I feel like we could all stand to man-up in our faith a little bit. Me more than anyone. Probably I need to step out in faith more so I have need to use it. A faith that is not exercised isn't anything to boast about. A faith not tested cannot be trusted.