Foundation

“For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” 1 Co 3:11

“If God is the final answer to all things, then we will surely lose our intellectual curiosity about all things,” someone commented to me the other day.

“It’s not that much fun getting lost in a maze,” I replied.

I used to have a similar idea to his and was quite proud of being someone who carved his own direction and found his own answers in life. I was lost and enjoyed being lost, for it was so thrilling searching for an exit in the giant maze of life.

I was a moth that rushed to the fire, mistaking a burning flame for a guiding light and ended up scorched many times.

“The joy lies in the search, not in the approach of our final destination,” he remarked, ignoring what I had to say about the issue.

“Is he a man, is man he?” This is one of the lines of the very first poem that I wrote. I envisioned myself as a superman of sorts.

Those who try to rise above humanity sink below it. I came across this line somewhere in my reading. That’s what I was as a young man for a season. I was drowning literally, until I found a strong hand that pulled me up from a moss-covered rock.

Is God the ultimate obstacle of our self-realization and self-actualization, or is he Jacob’s ladder leading to heaven by which we can climb to highest of high? If the foundation has already been laid, why do we still labor day and night to lay a new one? Is it because we don’t believe the foundation is strong enough to support us?

I didn’t usually venture out too far in my search for truth during my youth, for I was somewhat intellectually-challenged, and I suppose a lot of smart people could go a lot farther that I ever did, but all of them ended up hitting a roadblock just the same on the way and found themselves lost and depressed. The only joy of traveling is returning home, so some people say, but constant sojourning tends to make weary travelers restless and homeless.

“The foundation has been laid!” I cry out day and night like John the Baptist once did in the wilderness, yet my message has fallen on deaf ears and closed hearts. Christ has come and gone; yet we continue to search for him in the form of arts and literature, music and drama, science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics.

Some of the drinking buddies of my youth have become scholars and professors, but I suspect that they are still wrestling with the issues that we used to discuss deep into the night over beer and wine, and the resolutions we came up with after long deliberation were drenched by our drunken stupor and have long been buried under the sands of time.