"Elise! Learn something profound! Gain some particular insight into your own human nature!"It just doesn't work like that. I guess when you're looking too hard, you can miss what's right in front of you. Edgar Allan Poe--no, I must be honest--the dog Wishbone's version of The Purloined Letter taught me long ago that the best place to hide something is in plain sight. At the time I wasn't greatly impressed, and continued to hide things in carved out books and bed springs, but the significance has since resonated.
The dishes need done. My room needs organized for the fall. My two youngest brothers just disappeared around the edge of a barn with a machete, an arrow, and old vegetables from the garden--I wonder why?
Sometimes righteousness isn't a big whiz-bang discovery or dolled up bad day. Sometimes things just need to be done, like reading that chapter for Bible study, or rearranging my bookshelves for maximum efficiency. Sometimes we think that if we're not learning something phenomenal and world-shaking, we aren't really close to God. We don't feel God speaking to us, so we must be doing something wrong.
Before I become worked up, I think I shall just mildly declare these to be cumbersome lies that we need not embrace. Righteousness isn't a collection of profound thoughts or feelings. That's called philosophy. Nietzsche and Freud were philosophers.
When I'm looking too hard for profundity, it escapes my attention. The written word is surely the most marvelous creation I have ever been incapable of fully realizing, yet I didn't find myself incapable of realizing it because I was looking for something to realize. Instead I was reading Acts, and the momentousness suddenly broke upon me like an overripe cucumber thrown by my youngest brother at a barn wall.
Life is too profound to give up in a futile search for significance. I think I shall cease trying to define profundity, and instead, do the dishes. Lunch will need to be made soon.
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