If We've Only Got One Life…

Burn Out Bright

For some of you, this song is infamous – I play it every Friday afternoon at the beginning of our sound check for Crusade’s Real Life meeting. Here’s the beginning:

Does it have to start with a broken heart
Broken dreams and bleeding parts
We were young and world was clear
Young ambition disappears
I swore it would never come to this
The average, the obvious

I’m still discontented down here
I’m so discontented

If we only got one try
If we’ve only got one life
If time was never on our side
Before I die I want to burn out bright

A year ago, that discontentment started to hit me. Sure, I was enjoying my tech-company internship, writing useful code for real projects, doing what I had dreamed of for years. But it lacked… something. Meaning, purpose, vision, ambition, excitement.

Don’t get me wrong – God calls some people to do just the kind of work I was doing. For some people, it can be the most meaningful, God-glorifying, Christ-displaying thing they can do. But for me, it was Ben-glorifying and money-exalting. It made me look good, and it made me comfortable and secure. And by God’s grace, He began stirring in my heart discontentment with what I was doing. I liked what I was doing, but I began dreaming of so much MORE.

God began giving me a vision of Him and a passion for Him that seemed to demand something different from me. Last semester in Crusade our theme was “Made To Worship” – we looked at how orthodoxy (right knowledge of God) leads to orthopraxy (right actions) and doxology (worship of God). That is, to appropriately worship something (ie, God), you need to know it. We drew the theme from a combination of two verses:

Let us press on to know the Lord. – Hosea 6:3

For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. – Psalm 96:4

In order to properly worship God, we need to know Him first. How can we praise Him for His various attributes, or for the things He has done, if we don’t actually know about them? Yes, some things about God are meant to remain a mystery, but much has been revealed to us through the Bible, and as Christians we should search them out.

And so as that sort of became my theme (pair of) verses – “Let us press on to know the Lord, for He is great and greatly to be praised” – this sort of became my theme song.

Before I die I want to burn out bright.

Not bright by shining, as if I had any inherent worth or glory to be displayed, but bright by reflecting – reflecting God’s glory and his greatness, so that others can perhaps catch a glimpse of who He is and how satisfying He is.

Not burn out by foolishly working myself to death and exhaustion, but burn out in the active sense of the word – go out burning, go out working – not go out napping (or golfing or sea-shell collecting).

And all of this is with the knowledge that it is by God’s grace that I am alive today, and, if it is His will, I might not be alive tomorrow – death could come at any moment.

So the brightness and the burning needs to start now, because I could die at any moment.

So what does this mean for me? I’m not completely sure yet. I have some ideas. I have some desires. I think I know where I might like to be in a year, if the Lord wills, and where I might like to be in 5. And, of course, I have some ideas about 40 and 50 years down the road. Pray for me as I try to discern what I should be doing and when.

But in the here and now, there is work to be done – Christians and nonchristians at Cornell who need to be told about and reminded what Jesus has done for them – what He died to save them from and save them for. There are ongoing administrative and technical details to be worked out. There are friendships to be cultivated and relationships to be redeemed. But most importantly, there is more of God to taste and see and know. There is always more, and whatever context/situation I am in, that will be my primary pursuit. Know God more, see more of His glory, and respond – that’s worship.

And so that’s what this blog is, really – a little glimpse into my pursuit of all these things. Expect a lot of little posts, pointing you to what I’m reading or listening to or thinking about. And, of course, expect longer musings about various subjects. I’ll try to keep the emo and whining to a minimum – after all, I’m not a 14-year-old girl. Hopefully I’ll make you think, and provoke questions (feel free to ask in the comments or email me).

-Ben