Today - Saturday. A day off from classes and a morning scheduled to run with a new friend around Forest Park, the Central Park of St. Louis. We spent about an hour running and attempting, through labored breathing, to talk stories and histories. We talked about how we share a similar leaning in our personalities, a leaning that can often be a blessing but more often than not can be a curse: we're idealists.
Idealism on the surface sounds pretty good. By definition (and I'm selecting one of many) is the practice of forming ideals and living under them. Creating in my mind the 'best case scenario' for something. The problem comes when the 'best case' becomes at best the 'mediocre case scenario.' When living under what you hoped for becomes less than hoped for. Whether it be in a relationship, work, church, seminary, I have the tendency, as I think many of us do, to create ideals and then subsequently become disappointed or frustrated when my creation becomes tarnished by the realities of living in a sin-laden world.
This tension between ideal and real is so often the tension I live in with regard to my walk with God, with my family, with seminary. I paint ideals of who He 'should' be and I'm reminded later that His ways are higher than my ways. I create pictures of who I want to be as a husband or father or brother or son and two minutes later find myself wanting to delete what just came out of my mouth. I think learning Biblical Greek will be such a mountaintop experience to be able to, on my own, translate the Holy Word of God and then in Chapter 10 of my Greek Primer exercises find myself fumbling and stumbling through what the word for 'is' is.
What it all comes down to ultimately is that the ideal has been, is and always will be Jesus. There's nothing and no one better. He will never fail apart or fall short of ideal. He never changes. And even when I do or my illusions of best case scenarios do, He offers grace. Grace to say, "I am the ideal, the perfect plan, and it was part of this perfect plan to take the fall for imperfect, sinful, pessimistic people."
God is the perfect idealist. His plans and pictures of what is best never fail. I don't want to be an idealist anymore. I want Him to be.
