The Life I Thought Wasn't Mine

"...Come and see." - John 1:46 (NIV)

There is probably someone you think of when life turns hard, a person who seems to carry it better than most. Things go wrong, and they do not fall apart. They stay kind when kindness wins them nothing. There is a steadiness in them that does not rise and fall with the day, a quiet that does not seem to depend on everything going well. You might not say it out loud, but watching them, a quiet desire begins to form. You would like to live the way they live. You would like whatever it is they have. It leaves you wondering where a life like that comes from.

For a long time you may have set that desire aside. It's easy to decide that a life like that belongs to a certain kind of person, and that you are simply not one of them. So little by little you stop expecting it for yourself, and you call that being honest about who you are. But the desire does not actually go away. It waits quietly beneath everything else. Every so often it returns, as though it remembers who you have nearly forgotten.

When Jesus was first gathering the people who would follow Him, a man named Philip went looking for his friend Nathanael. He told him they had found the one Moses and the prophets had written about. Nathanael was not impressed. "Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" Philip did not argue with him, and he did not try to settle every doubt. He simply said, "...Come and see." (John 1:46)

That invitation is older than Philip. Long before him, God was already saying through the prophet Isaiah, "...Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters" (Isaiah 55:1). The invitation came before anyone had it all figured out. It was spoken to ordinary people who simply knew they were thirsty, and it included everyone. Philip did not invent that invitation. He simply trusted it enough to pass it on. The life you have watched from a distance was never meant for just a few. It was open the whole time, while you stood back and quietly assumed it was not available for you.

So maybe the desire you have carried was never something to set aside. It may have been the invitation all along, persistently calling you closer. You don't have to settle every question today, or prove that you belong. You only have to take the next step toward the life that has been quietly drawing you. It was never beyond your reach. He's still saying, "Come." Follow the longing. He opens the way.

Prayer

Father, thank You for inviting us to come near long before we understand everything. Keep drawing us closer to Your Son, and give us willing hearts to answer Your invitation one step at a time. Amen.