The Emotion of It All

If you haven't noticed, I talk a great deal about things being a balance...if you go off too far on one end of the spectrum or the other, then your world is off-kilter. Yep, you guessed it, I think about this and ponder it so much because I am completely UN-balanced! But...I'm a work in progress...

I was thinking about emotion the other day. At the exact same time I was ruefully asking God why He made me with so MUCH emotion, a friend was sending me an email with a beautiful line about celebrating emotion. Ironic, huh? I quickly quipped back to her in a short email that I wasn't exactly celebrating my emotion when I was rocking a baby to sleep, sobbing as I watched The Waltons because Daddy just didn't understand why Jason didn't want to go into the family business - he wanted to be a country music star! Even more ironically, when a gospel music show came on next, I didn't hesitate to roll my eyes at the elaborate show of emotion displayed.

So why can I display such emotion over some things and then hold others in disdain when they display similar emotion? I think one reason is my emotion scares me. I hate the roller coaster up and down feeling. I can certainly be ruled by my emotions and that is upsetting to a control freak like myself. I fear and am angered by the fact that in my humanness, I can be fine, positively giddy in fact, one moment and then feel like my life is topsy-turvy because of one insecurity. Because one person doesn't understand me. Because one situation in my life is not right. It could take one comment or look and I have dived from the mountain to the valley. This range of emotion scares me. God and I are working on this - He is teaching me a great deal about the reality of things and the fact that the only thing unchanging is...well, Him.

So maybe I fear that I will come across as someone who is keeling over in a faint, proclaiming the day of the Lord...yet, I realize that I cannot, as I try so often to do, contain the unfathomable mysteries and grandness of what makes our Christian faith. I cannot get it down to bare-bone facts.

You can't take the emotion out of the thing.

I don't want a faith that is based solely on emotional thrills. I have to be grounded in Scripture and know truth. Not just get carried away by the emotion of beautiful music or touching testimonies.

Yet, I cannot reduce Jesus and His truths to plain facts either. I must be well-versed in Scripture. I must study His Word faithfully and know the facts. But to become ritualistic or legalistic, or luke-warm in my faith, would be a great loss.

We serve a mighty God. An amazing God. And as He reveals more and more of Himself to us, as we learn more about Him and His Spirit, we will be filled with awe. Wonder. Spontaneous worship. A need to sing His praises. To write an emotion-filled blog. To share His love with an unbelieving world, tears in our eyes, gesturing wildly for others to understand.

So get the facts. Don't just let others tell you about Him or their philosophies, sell you on their brand of 'religion'. Pick up the Bible and find out yourself. Memorize Scripture. Get serious about Him. Be a scholar right there in your easy chair.

But don't be afraid to spontaneously lift your arms in praise, emotions overflowing and unashamedly praise Him. Because you can't put God in a box. You don't take Him out on Sundays or when things are really bad. Day in and day out, you will be amazed by this God who created us. And that is worth getting emotional about.