I sat to pray and talk to God this morning.  Man, my heart is so full right now.  Full with worry, excitement, impatience, desire, frustration, ideas, heartache, Vision.  SO much of me right now wants to just lay down and rest. To STOP. Everything. Except Judy and the kids. I just want all the time and energy I have to go there. But I feel the drive, the pull, to our Wild at Heart trip for men in November, to a Vision of the ranch, to our growing online business, to building a true community, to getting in top physical shape.  So deep.  I feel God’s call to all of it.  I love it.  It’s incredible to be tapped into that wellspring.  But, like hypothermia, as the cold drains strength, the desire becomes strong to just lay down and rest.  Give up and give in. But give in to what?  The slumber is the kiss of death.   It’s a resignation.  A false contentment.  Dispassionate and apathetic.   It is a giving of life over to death.  And like the hypothermic slumber, life can go cold.  We fall asleep.  We become falsely content with chasing mediocrity.  There is a strong likelihood that we haven’t actually ever been really awake.  Or we’ve known moments of “awake-ness” but haven’t had the strength or the people around us to maintain it.  So we long to go back to sleep.

Like Cypher in “The Matrix”.  He was wakened by Morpheus and was called into a titanic struggle for the hearts and minds of other people.  Their mission, as a crew, was to pull people out of the Matrix and invite them into a real existence, in a community that was truly alive.  But Cypher became jaded.  Watch the clip in the sidebar to the right.  Or click here to watch it on YouTube.

Surrounded by wine, steak and a fine cigar, Cypher makes a deal to go back to sleep.  “I don’t want to remember nothing.  NOTHING.  You hear me?”

Let the Matrix take over again.

But I can’t.  (Actually, I can.  You can too.)  We can choose sleep.  (In fact, we need to choose rest.  But they are two different things.)  We can choose mediocrity.  We can choose all those things that we think give us life but actually keep us asleep.

Grandfather spoke about those things that stir our hearts awake to the reality of an unseen and eternal life.  From his native language to English, he translated it as “Inner Vision” or “The Voice of God”.  He said the Voice of God gives us Vision for our lives, our true purpose.  And then he said:

“A person who is not living their Vision is living death.”

And I remember.  I begin to remember why I can’t fall asleep.  Because it would mean death.  It would mean ignoring Vision.  It would mean ceasing to live for others.  Death by selfishness.  Death by numbness.  Death by mediocrity.

I can’t do it.  I won’t do it.

One foot in front of the other.  Stay awake.  Stay alert for the needs of others and rise up to meet them.  Fight.  Live.  Pray.  Listen.  Laugh.  Love.  And wake up the next morning to do it again.