I happen to know a warrior of faith hanging by a thread.
I happen to have a friend of mine wishing they could disappear.
I hear the fear in a familiar voice's laughter.
I tangibly feel the child next-door's hurt as their father makes fun of them for crying.
I see my peers filling their bodies and hearts with garbage.
I sense regretful choices in a crowded room.
I text a cousin asking why we are awake but want to sleep forever.
There are so many frantic bodies and busy hearts. It's utterly manic, yet oftentimes manifests itself in the real world with an eerily still exterior. It's bizarre, it's unnatural, it's dangerous. On some level, you feel it too, right? How far gone does one have to be to escape something so palpable?
I have never experienced more anxious people (and more "faux calm" people), or come to grips with anxiety myself more than I have since going to school and living in New York City.
And what is anxiety, really, but life without God? Momentary lapses of extended separation from Christ. Disengagement with the Spirit within you, living inside of you. Quenching Him, grieving Him, replacing Him, ignoring Him.
Another form of control of one's body apart from Jesus.
What has been kind of curious for me though, as I consider it all, is how we seek to replace our anxiety, one control, with another control, and not instead a peace. To us, peace is weakness, not action. Not forward-moving. Peace is vulnerably still. And that other control we seek and deem that we need to medicate is often not God, but a rapid high speed force of something else. This city is bursting at the seams with much opportunity for something, lots of things, anything else.
I was looking at an Instagram account with a series of pictures and quotes about why people love New York City the other night. It's pretty harmless, but as I often do (probably too much) of, I started to wonder. Every quote bothered me, ticked me off in a way that was beyond late night over-tiredness, and it didn't take long to figure out why.
This city, more than others, is filled with tons of people obsessed with chasing after their perceived ideal of glory.
But it's mostly glory for themselves, and it stops there.
In a sense, where else will you do your glory chasing? It's a city of dreams, after all. It's a city of hope. I'm in it, I'm a part of it, I'm doing "that dream thing" too, lest I be a hypocrite and claim that I'm not. But the anxiety enters in because to be here you believe you must strive or else be left behind. And to strive outwardly requires the will to strive happening inwardly. And to strive inwardly leads to spinning your wheels, leads to...well, death, in some strain or form.
Comparison, city worship, goal worship, people worship, even experience worship are anxiety ticking time explosives.
Before living here, I didn't come to the city often, despite growing up a pretty fast car ride away. I could probably count on one hand the excursions. But I do remember one of the most pivotal times I came to Manhattan back then. I was in eighth grade, insecure, going to see Wicked because someone gifted me tickets or something. And I remember having kind of a disappointing time that trip, being a little grumpy for trivial reasons (my Uggs were probably too tight, you feel me?). But then, at the end of the show, I watched the procession of actors bowing at the curtain call, and I lost it. I wanted to be up there, on that stage where those actors were. Badly. It was then, when the bubble of characters and lighting and sound and effects burst and I saw these sweating, exhausted actors as the people they really were, unmasked and grateful and bowing almost submissively, that I understood. These were people, participating in something sort of like magic, but really, just souls in costumes. And they were living a dream that felt so close to me, so attainable, even if realistically I knew it might be a long time away.
On some level I sensed then the realizations that are taking deeper root now, but I left that night more dizzied by the twinkle of the lights, the energy of the city, and taken with the mystery of what it would be like to be there all the time, living out my dreams. I felt that the city was magic.
But the magic isn't in New York city. The glory isn't in what heights you reach.
And this is not some long diatribe about relinquishing dreams we hold dear just because they were (and are still) magical to us - no, it is realizing how to dream them more fully. It is understanding what real glory is, and where it actually resides.
We are a city of refugees, but no longer with the former noble aims of old, to escape real persecution and chains, but in many ways engaging in our own persecutions ourselves in our self-willed imprisonments.
Spend five minutes talking to someone here and they'll tell you their dream and offer you a spirit of rejection in the same breath. Well, which is it? You can't be in your utopia and your hell. To me, this glory chasing, this thrill seeking group-think is founded in the depths of some of the worst depression in individuals I have ever seen.
And that is why I (you, we) breathe in anxiety here. It's not that hard to connect the dots, is it? It's difficult to "wake up in the city that never sleeps" when no one engages in a rest to wake up from in the first place. And you're a part of that. You see, feel, hear, and are nearly forced to embrace the struggle as a rite of passage the moment you walk outside.
The truth is, God is the only power that can fill the empty nag that exists in the pit of your stomach walking home at the end of the night, in the darkness, in the silence.
And maybe He wants you to feel a little uncomfortable here.
Do you want to know what real New York City fervor should be? Waking up knowing you have a kingdom purpose. That you have plans for your life that are so far beyond you and not at all about you and satisfying for you all at once.
Want to feel more beautiful than the Rockefeller tree? Read the words that you were fearfully and wonderfully made. Bought with a price. Cared for. Approved of. Chosen. Loved.
You're beautiful to Him before your mirror debates you on the subject.
Marching doesn't unify, Jesus' love does. Love that knew no flaw is the standard and access to freedom.
Your job or your worries that your dreams will fail are nothing in the hands of a sovereign God who just wants you to look up and truly see who He is and enjoy your standing in His presence. To recognize that this is where you find your worth and value. This is where you find your dreams.
Hiding and sleeping your day away doesn't give Him the chance to show you why you don't need to be doing that, or what wonderful thing He's about to do with you.
Drowning him out with your headphones, filling up all minutes of silence won't rid you of your own culpability.
What will you do with Jesus?
Will you choose your dreams over Him? Ignore His calls?
Everyone is hurting here. Everyone is lost. Everyone needs peace. Everywhere. Even if you're not in New York City at all.
I know a Savior who delivers. And I know a magnificent city that holds promise. I also know and experience daily countless amounts of people whose passions, if redirected, could make the ground quake in the name of the love of Jesus, the fulfillment of Promise. Covering every square inch of this city is the source of that Promise, the Hope of the world, the Maker of dreams and the Holder of hearts. Your dreams are not complete apart from Him. Alone, they are really not dreams at all. But with Him, they develop and grow into much more than the seductive skyline could ever provide.
To leave Him neat and tidy for your Sunday slacks misses the entire point and vision and scope and possibility. We are missing the mark as a city, as a people, as a nation of dreamers. We are entranced by the reflection of light from the crystal, worshipping the beam and failing to see the glory and intricacy and multi-dimension of the Source itself.
You're not supposed to hurt this much. You know this, deep down you know this. We'd all be better off knowing and confessing that what we're feeling is universal, what we're seeing and hearing is pain, and that we are struggling, that we are here and trying but we still need. We need, but we are gifted with the grace to know Who is sure.
What if our desire for glory got transplanted over to the One who is Glory? What a relief that would be, and what pressure would finally release from the enormity of us placing it on ourselves. Such glory was never meant for us, but for the One from whom all things and all glory originate.
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And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes." (Luke 19:41-42, words of Jesus)
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18)
For it is fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. (Hebrews 2:10)
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (1 John 1:14)
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