No Steak for me; I will have the Lentils

I got nothing against lentils.  I love a good lentil soup, and in different dishes.  But I am a carnivore at heart, and I love my steaks.  I love a good, fatty, thick steak: medium-rare, right off the grill, covered in the searing juices. 

But my steak is a special meal.  It takes time for a good steak.  It is not cheap, and most of the time requires time to budget for.  It takes time to pore over the selections for the perfect slice.     Then you have to prepare what you may want to put on the steak; mine is a simple dry rub.  After that, let the steak come to room temperature, get the fire ready… Got to stop.  This is too much for me.  But my point is that most of the time, something special requires time. Instead, that is a meal, a career, or a covenant with the one you love.  And nowadays, we are told that time is at a premium.

It is said that:

Time is money. ...

Time waits for no one. ...

Lost time is never found again. ...

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend. ...

Because of this, we are now never disconnected and always over-committed.  From the Wall Street shakers to all the Queen Mothers, who sacrificed their time for the time they poured into their kids.  The kids are now going in two directions at once, trying to fit in some me time, needing to finish that assignment, and I have to get my exercise in. 

I sometimes feel like the Grinch with  "all the noise. All the noise, noise, noise, NOISE! They'll bang on tong-tinglers, blow their foo-flounders, crash on Jang-jinglers”.

All of this has made me like Esau, and I sell my birthright to take care of my NOW!

Not all of you may be familiar with the story of Esau and his brother Jacob.  It is in the Bible^, and it hits so close to home that I cringe whenever I think about it.

The long and short of this story is that Esau was a hunter who loved his time in the woods.  He would spend as much time there as he could.  His brother Jacob was a homebody.  He enjoyed knocking around the house, working on projects, and even trying his hand at cooking.  One day, Esau came in after being out all night and most of the day hunting.  He was hungry.  I mean, three-alarm fire hunger, and he rushes into the kitchen and sees Jacob cooking, guess what, lentil soup.  Esau begs for food; he will DIE of hunger if he does not eat right now.  Jacob decides this is an opportunity (as a second child, I know about trying to take advantage of my older brother) for ME.

A little background is important here.  In the “olden times,” the older child pretty much had it made (my feelings exactly).  The birthright always went to the oldest males.  The Jewish Law was not as harsh as the tradition where the oldest gets everything and the youngest nothing.  The older son gets two-thirds, and the youngest gets one-third of everything.  Now you see that Jacob was not trying to take a toy, but the lion’s share of everything the family had, and that Esau had a right to.

Well, spoiler alert: Esau had to satisfy his need right then and there.  To get his need met RIGHT NOW, he swore an oath to his younger brother that he could have his birthright if only he gave him something to eat.  The hunter was giving up his birthright for lentils.

I must admit, I am Esau, and I have spent a lifetime settling.  I couldn’t wait and had to have everything right now.  I am sure many reading this have put themselves in a similar boat.  Like Esau, we have given up our rightful birthright, with all the blessings it would bring, to satisfy our momentary appetite.  Not real hunger, just appetite.  I can get too caught up in the easy and the short term.  My excuse is that I am a product of my society.  I think that my immediate need is more important than truth, hope, and love.  To be honest, immediate needs lead us to settle for cheap knockoffs in life.  I do not value my birthright.

But now I can hear some of you saying woe, woe, WOE Bible-thumper.  Don’t judge me.  You do not know the life I have had.  I had it tough.  We are not all lucky enough to sit back, ponder the meaning of life, and find peace.  We are in the real world, Mr. Wizard.

Unfortunately, some of you have had a very crappy go of it so far.  I do not mean this lightly.  We live in a world where we can be hurt, physically and mentally, daily.  We can be violated with no known recourse, left in our loneliness.  I would never discount this.  Fighting the dragons in our lives is a real battle that requires real support.  This answer is beyond me.   There is no magic pill to life, and if you hear that being peddled by a person, celebrity, “doctor”, or church, then it is Jacob whispering in your ear. 

This is why we medicate ourselves in a million different ways.  The toll of this road is a forfeit of our birthright.  Many times, this was not a single toll, like a Faustian bargain with the Devil.  More likely, it is a micro-forfeit made a million times each day.  It is the small sell-outs we can make each day. We can become like a moth that dances with a flame.  Before you know it, we are in the flame.

They say, “Life is a Journey.”  Well, I have found out that it really is.  What do we do in the short-term, or get in the short-term that is lasting or meaningful?  Nothing that is objectively true, good, or beautiful is obtained in the short term.  Being a parent is not a short-term, easy experience.  Artists and athletes must train for years to perfect their abilities.  To experience the true gift of parenting or competing on the highest level (or even to the best of your ability), or being moved by music, art, or literature, are transcendent qualities of life.  Transcendent is the beyond or above the range of normal or merely physical human experience we all yearn for.

So, do you only want to settle for lentils in your life?  If not, then as Emerson, Lake, and Palmer once said (I am really dating myself),

“Welcome back, my friends

To the show that never ends

We're so glad you could attend

Come inside! Come inside”

This is what we were created for.  What life is meant for.  Not trading the truth, goodness, and beauty around us for temporary needs, wants, and desires at the cost of my true self, or “eliminating” anyone standing in my way.  This is the long road.  This is discipline and desire for the transcendent.  But it comes down to trust, and I would venture to say faith.

Walking away from the easy and immediate is scary.  It means I will place my hope and trust in something I do not have now.  I must have trust that when I do get the deepest needs met, it will be better than I imagined and worth the wait.  I also trust that if I do not get this, it was for my own goof that I may not be able to see currently.

It really does come down to love.  An internal love and an external love.  A transcendent love.  A love that is bigger than you or me.  It is understood that I have to run a race with purpose and faith that the reward at the end is worth it.  As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:24, “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win”.  It means I will have to deal with my issues, wants, and desires daily to keep my focus on the goal.  As Jesus says in Luke 14:27, "And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”  It is to come to realize that there is more to my life than what I think.  It is important to understand that the power to do this is not within ourselves but comes from outside us.  From something greater than yourself and outside of this reality.  If within reality, how can you ever hope for something more?  As AA says, trust your higher power to bring you through.  I unashamedly say that this is a real relationship with God that can be had through his son, Jesus Christ.  He is not first among many, but the uncaused first cause of all we see and experience.  

In the words of Jethro Tull (man, I’m old):

“People what have you done?

Locked Him in His golden cage

Golden Cage

Made Him bend to your religion

Him resurrected from the grave

From the grave

He is the God of nothing

If that's all that you can see

You are the God of everything

He's inside you and me.”

Remember, God is so much more than we can understand or try to tell.  The hope is that, over time, we can continue to speak our hearts to God and fully understand that He is a God worth knowing.