Oceans

I can’t believe I am going to tell you this. Not that I have never told anybody this before, I have just never told a lot of people this before.
Whenever I am in a cheeky mood I always want to watch one of the Ocean’s movies. 11, 12, 13, doesn’t matter.

I know, I know. It’s a series of movies about glamorous white collar crime.

Which is why I can’t believe I am telling you this.
Oh no. I’m not ashamed I like these movies…I’m surprised I am telling you what I am going to tell you next.
I admit there is something about each of them I find especially amusing. Maybe it’s the “brilliance” of the characters, the wit, the foresight, the way Brad Pitt is eating in every single scene or the way he and George Clooney don’t finish one single sentence to each other through the whole movie. No joke.
It all started during a Christmas break when I was in college and my family got snowed in. So, rather than travelling to grandma’s, who lives a handful of hours away, we rented and watched all three of the movies, in a period of less than 24 hours. Since then I have been hooked. Or shall I say…corrupted.

Ha.

The issue is this: Whenever I watch them I get an overwhelming urge. An urge brought out by nothing else. I will never forget the first time said feeling came rushing over me. A foreign feeling which I had never felt before and only now feel when I watch the movies (but I already told you that). It was one of those nights I had watched the movies and I was praying before I went to bed when, in this sudden outburst of foreign urge I yelled to God, “Oh NO!!! NO! NO! NO! Lord! This can’t be happening! Certainly I can’t have succumbed this soon! I am trying to be a good Christian woman here but ever since watching those movies all I want to do is rob people!!! NO! I can’t keep thinking about my friends ‘Now, if I was going to pull a heist, which eleven of you would make the cut?’ Deliver me from this madness!!”

Ha.

Hahaha.

It’s a cute story. Me being allured by a glamorous life of crime  and having to use all of my mad spiritual warfare skills to ward off those never-had-before-and-never-had-again desires.

I will be happy to report that, as much as the movie makes those things look like an attainable reality, I have never pulled any stunt or Vegas-robbing heist of any kind.
Nope.
And I won’t.
I don’t believe in crime…I’m a good Christian woman for crying out loud (just like I told God in that prayer)!

 *Smirk*

All of that being said, my humorous-only-because-I-will-never-follow-through feelings laid bare before the world, I watched one of them the other day as I was in my studio. Just for background noise.

I was in a cheeky mood.

And as I was watching it I of course imagined it was reality. “What,” I thought, “would real life be like for someone—a real life person whose real life was one of glamorous crime like in the movie—who got saved out of that? Where would they go and what would they do after Jesus entered the picture?”

The thought is almost more intriguing than the one of trying to figure out who my heist team of “11” would be.

But really, before you can figure out what life would be like AFTER, one has to figure out what life for someone is like BEFORE. As in, why would someone lead a lifestyle like that? What about it could be appealing?

Oh sure, there are the classic allurements. Women, money, parties, power over peers, pride of intelligence. All the classic things.

But why would someone rob people? And not just ‘someone’ but one who is already a millionaire, stealing from ‘people’ who will still be millionaires after you rob them?

It’s not as if you NEED the money.
I suppose you might need another ego boost….maybe?
Then I thought, “Could it really be that simple?”

 There is a line in the trailer for The Great Gatsby that goes like this: “The restlessness approached hysteria.”

And I think that is precisely, simply, the answer for why someone with no “needs” would steal “necessities” from someone else (excluding of course the case for people who are ill and just want to watch the world burn…).

Boredom.

Restlessness that approaches hysteria.

In the movie even, right before all the planning for the first heist happens, the main character says to the other, “Rusty, you look bored,” to which is given the reply, “I AM bored. Oh gosh I’m bored.”

So they come up with a plan to give themselves “something to do.”

The problem with all of this is that—well—I can’t just write it off. The thought nags my little brain, for, while I am not going to do some grandiose heist, I think I know the boredom. Or I at least have glimpses of it.

But…I’m a good Christian woman! That shouldn’t be happening to me, should it?

I mean, I already have the words of life pertaining to this issue: “Find rest, O my soul, in God alone.” (Psalm 62:1, 5)

So how do I settle a soul at rest, knowing beyond any doubt’s shadow that rest will come from nowhere else, with the small struggle of boredom?

Is there a difference between the two?
And I am not talking about boredom which comes from the lack of things to do. Like the kind that mopes around the house and goes, “I’m bored.”
No. I don’t care about that kind. That kind of boredom is a choice. What I am talking about is the restlessness. The deep boredom that can come even when you have a to-do list a mile long and work 80 hours a week.

I have thought about this a lot.

I thought of giving you the pat answer like, “We get bored when we run to other things than Jesus.” “Idolatry makes us bored.” “Complacency makes us bored.” “Apathy makes us bored.” Etc. Etc. Etc.

But then I thought that maybe I am coming at this from the wrong angle; looking at it from a negative perspective. Wanting to point out the wrong-ness of the WHAT they are running to rather than the truth in the WHY people run in the first place. Because it’s in the WHY that we find a great truth.

II Corinthians 5:1-5 "For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.  Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come."

Do you know what that says to me? It says to me that we bore because we are just so OVER this mortality stuff and all it entails. Kind of like a “Been there, done that, saw it twice, ate everything, still don’t care,” attitude. Don’t you think that the closer we get to Christ—to THE Immortal—the more we look at all this perishable stuff around us and go, “Yeah, it’s just not doing it for me anymore.”

And that is the beauty of “the run.” The beauty of WHY some could be tempted to plan elaborate heists for no good reason other than they could, so they did: because our mortality fights against itself and says “This can’t possibly be all there is.”

 In the book A Severe Mercy C.S. Lewis is quoted for having said ‘“Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures?’ Then, if we complain of time and take such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest? It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal {mortal} creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed at it—how fast it goes, how slowly it goes {boredom}, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren’t adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity {immortality} exists and is our home.”

Isn’t that brilliant? In a slightly different way of putting it I could say, “The mere fact that we feel boredom with all of this immortal stuff—stuff that will not survive the flames of the end—means that we do not naturally belong in the same category as those things. We find ourselves desperately “longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling” because this tent we presently find ourselves living in is not our home. We can’t wait for what is mortal to be swallowed up by life.”

Why, you might ask, does our soul find rest in God alone? Because eternity is set in the hearts of men (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and therefore our eternal hearts are never at home, never at rest, unless it is with the Eternal One.