It should be easier, right?

What does my heart truly want?
  To be closer to God than my next breath, to trust his steady and faithful presence, to search for his coming with anticipation, to be guided by his knowing Spirit each and every day.

  I know this to be true, and yet somehow I manage to insulate myself from the presence of God -- not knowingly, not willfully, but slowly, steadily, without intention or effort, I drift from the will and closeness of God, preferring easier things.  I busy myself with tasks and chores, many of them important, and I always manage to leave off the most important thing.  The small crack that exists on one day is widened by lack of effort, and it soon turns into a void, and I stare into the chasm and wonder how it arrived and if there is any hope for filling it.  Over the years, my heart has grown calloused and indifferent, and I wonder what tomorrow holds.

  While some of the parables in the Bible leave me fearful, wondering if it is too late, others give me joyous hope -- like the prodigal feeding himself in the trough, like the coin lost in the woman's house, I believe in a God who searches for the lost.  I know that I am lost, because I do not recognize the surroundings in which I live -- they are familiar, and yet they are not right, because the anxiety in my soul tells me that this is not the life to which God has intended me.  There are pieces that are correct, but I have assembled them wrongly, believing other things to be more important.  I believe God seeks my heart, calling to me in the deep, blowing the Spirit across the smoldering embers of the faith I have neglected, stirring something to life.

  The journey will not be easy, and the temptation to turn back, to choose an easier way, is always present.  I know not where the road leads, and I can scarcely make out the next step in the murkiness of modern life, but I believe that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life, and as that light has shined in the darkness for ages past, I believe it still shines today for those of us who long for direction on the path that leads to life.