Chasing Jesus (eBook)

Preface:
Just You and Me…Invite to a Trip

I’d like you to take a journey with me, a most peculiar and wonderful one, I think. There will be stops along the way, changes of scenery, so to speak. Marvelous and inexplicable occurrences, questions that many Christians might harbor quietly and secretly in their hearts will be brought out into the open, as well as some surprising gems of wisdom that I believe have a wondrous potential to bring you joy and peace of soul. Oh, those gems don’t come from my old brain. I’m just the farmer who perhaps has an eye for what to harvest. The planting’s been done by those wiser than me.

They won’t be things you generally hear about in church, if at all. That, I think, is the beauty of such concepts as Heart-Wisdom, “God-speak”, and the phenomenon of Joy, or what I call a “whiff of heaven.” They will likely be quite fresh to you, realities that underlie, if you will, our Faith. Stuff of the Divinity perhaps at times alluded to, but seldom, if ever, fleshed out and given the treatment it deserves.

So, come with me…

“If I don’t make it to heaven, I’ll worship You from hell!”

I said that to God, and it’s illustrative of the zeal I hope to maintain right up to the finish line, when my fondest hope is to finally get answers to all this mush in which we struggle.

I don’t know what I’d say to anyone who might ask me to encapsulate this effort. There are so many “parts” to it. Much has happened to me that I can’t really explain. I, myself, am a weird duck in a lot of ways, always kidding and joshing people, acting the wit (I’m at least halfway there!)—the quintessential wag/smart-aleck, yet sometimes not so with it myself:

(Just outside the doors of a Nebraska high school, circa 1950)

Friend: “Hey Jack, ask me if I’m an orange.”

Me: “Okay. Are you an orange?”

Friend: “Yes. Now ask me if I’m a banana.”

Me: “Are you a banana?”

Friend: “No, idiot. I just told you! I’m an orange!”

(Sound of crickets as a bemused Jack stands there, staring blankly at the budding comic heading off to tell his homeroom pals)

So, sometimes the windshield, sometimes the bug. With all the jesting and kidding in which I’ve been both perp and victim, I often find in myself a deadly seriousness when considering matters such as faith.

Serious, yet…

Just as I think of beauty as not only a gift from God, but evidence as well of His very existence, so might well be humor. I know of nothing more appealing than Christians, indeed any folks, who can laugh with others and at themselves.

Consider the joyous, jovial Christian, one who takes oneself far less seriously than one’s faith. I think this sort might well be more pleasing to our Lord than a dour perfectionist, however pious. Who would be more attractive, likely more effective in representing our Faith to non-Christians? I think humor is one of the things that help to fill up the God-shaped holes in our spirits and can brighten our lives in what seems an ever-darkening world.

Christianity equates to light, not darkness.

I often imagine Jesus perhaps jesting with the apostles in the seminal days of our faith, maybe around a campfire on some shore under the stars He created. A pleasing picture, no?

I, by the way, am also cursed with insatiable curiosity and will watch everything from the occasional more adult-oriented, social commentary-type episodes of The Simpsons to the most critically acclaimed Masterpiece Theater presentations on PBS, and I will read everything from the Sunday funnies to the classics. This book spans those same levels regarding style, language, and purpose, and goes from the occasionally whimsical to the deadly serious.

I would say this to any potential reader: The book, the whole potpourri of stuff that’s in it, experiences—some quite remarkable—opinions, ruminations, my hopeful attempts at poetry—all honest and from the heart. I have no illusions as to finding any universal acceptance of the opinions. Actually, suspicions might be more accurate in some cases. Trust me, many of them may seem well outside the box. Only someone with a room-temperature IQ thinks everyone can be pleased. I think if the Lord, Himself, came walking across Lake Michigan, somebody’d complain He didn’t have a permit. And here I am, just a poor old duffer wallowing in the shallows…

So, poor me. I don’t know the total depth and extent of what I have here. I do know parts of it are important, even essential. The seemingly endless coincidences; the nights of unbidden thoughts and inspirations invading my sleep; what has dogged my consciousness and stalked my reveries; the very crying out of my own heart, my gut, my instincts: all tell me there are things here that should, indeed, must be said and shared.

And thus, the journey I relate. The tortuous odyssey of an oft-confused, “re-constituted” Christian, asking nagging questions, yet relating experiences that seem to point inexorably to a Godhead that delights in teasing with glorious little glimpses and hints of what lies just beyond what our poor minds can apprehend—requiring, instead, the language, the lingo of the heart.

Chapter Three, “Prelude to My Epiphany,” includes the true story of “Buddy.” It somehow, I believe, reveals the heart, so to speak, of this effort, in that it speaks of pain and hints, for those who might see it, of the necessity of pain for heart-wisdom and Joy.1 My fondest hope is that those who are open to it will have a marvelous experience similar to mine, but if all this book does is open the doors a bit for some to a fuller understanding of these three “essentials”, and thereby bring them closer to a true connection with their Maker, it will have been worth the writing and worth the reading.

As I write this on a bleak day in April 2020, I have no clue as to the potential success of this effort. There seem to be as many books as there are readers in this world. I think it would be very sad should it just go nowhere. I have “forwarded” some profound wisdom gleaned from men like C. S. Lewis and Peter Kreeft, wisdom that can be of great benefit, I believe, for Christians of all stripes.

Knowledge seems to have taken over from wisdom as time has gone on. Now, information (true and false) has usurped knowledge, and we seem to be increasingly foundering in vast informational seas of no depth, devoid of substance, and, too often, truth.

We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

The shallow-ization of society is no help to Christianity.

It’s been said that we will, not only as individuals but also as the human race, all one day stand before God.

The serious Christian might well wonder why so many of us, believers and otherwise, foolishly pursue the frivolous and leave wanting that which matters. So many blithely avoid dealing in mind and heart with what might happen should the Second Coming become a here-and-now reality and this circus come to a screeching halt…

A sound…a plea…a hope

to deliver one last vesper hymn as truth…

Too late.

Voices dying in the twilight.

One long, crying, plaintive note.

A symphony of souls strikes final chords

and it ends.

The heavens split.

And in that void between time and eternity, Man.

His bestowed sovereignty, his charge in ruins,

eyes forced to behold the foul detritus of his failure.

Treasures squandered as millions starved.

A bruised and bleeding planet, the haunted eyes of the hurting

bear witness brooking no rationalization.

All excuses, halted mid-breath,

mere blackened ashes spilling soundless from quivering lips.

Useless.

Creature meets Creator—naked, unmasked now, ashamed.

Yet…

Some have lived for a promise…

Or will we even look up from our cell-phones?

Tick-tock.

No answers as to why the most deadly serious of questions is ignored. Whether the ultimate procrastination or a nonpareil case of mass denial, to serious Christians, the hordes of unbelievers can seem like lemmings racing for the cliff. Could there be a more apt metaphor for today than the story of the Ark? Warnings, storm clouds ignored, the saddest of consequences…

No answers, and if there is any wisdom from me in this book, I’m sure it’s quite minuscule. I have found wisdom others have mined from life and have seen, through the grace of God, how so much of what they’ve passed on to us has dictated my own surprising experiences.

This book at base is an attempt to pass on what has been passed on to me and to others.

I’m offering you quite an eclectic meal here at Chez Prohaska, perhaps more mid-western smorgasbord than gourmet fare. The entrée is the necessity of pain, the wisdom of the heart, and a surprising personal revelation I believe is connected to the special phenomenon, Joy....