The Epicenter

I love the word “epicenter”.  I think it is fantastic.  The word epicenter just sounds like it has power, has energy, has intensity.  It should.

Today, I went looking for the word “epicenter”.  I realized for as many times as we talk about a certain office being the “epicenter” of a company or how a store is the “epicenter” of the mall, no one really defines it.  It is a word everyone knows – and no one can really harness.  I liked its inability to be harnessed. Because, in looking for a definition, I had a goal: I wanted to know if I could, if it was possible, to put parameters on what it might mean to be in the epicenter of where God is...

My dictionary results made my blood flow with anticipation.  Casually, any focal point of activity can be an epicenter.  The office in the company, the store in the mall...if that is where the activity is focused, it can be called the epicenter.  What would it look like to ensure I lived in such a way as to always be where God was the busiest?

However, I was soon to learn something different, something more.  The word “epicenter” is a geology term.  It refers most appropriately to the point on the earth’s surface directly above the focus of an earthquake.  Woah...How can I be connected to where the power of God is shaking the whole world?  I wanted to be where God was propelling the biggest activity – where the whole world was quaking because of the way He was hitting the surface of the earth.  I wanted to be in the middle.  I had come to a point where I found myself writing constantly, uncontrollably.  I decided it wasn’t anywhere near my answer but instead was my means to get to my Answer.  Anything to get me closer to where God was, is....  

My online dictionary research concluded with a “usage note”.  It said the geological usage was the most correct and the “figurative extensions” of the word should always be used in dangerous, destructive, or negative contexts.  Oh...

I did not want to find myself in the middle of something negative and destructive!  And yet, what I was really looking for, was the unmistakable and irreplaceable intensity of what it meant to truly follow Christ.  “He who wants to save his life will lose it...”  Sounds destructive.  “If any one would come after me, he must deny himself...”  Sounds negative.  “In this world, you will have trouble...”  Sounds dangerous.   Jesus promised things that were not all daisies and rainbows and said “this is what it means to be part of what I’m doing”?  Scary right?

I truly believe God is working inside the world I don’t understand.  Where my life is experiencing the earthquakes I cannot comprehend and leave me unable to get up off of the floor I am on, perhaps God is about to use me to be in the middle something so big, only God could have done it.  Perhaps the hurts and pains and uncertainties of this thing I think I’m living...are pieces and parts of what it means to be in the destructive and dangerous calling of what it means to be a Christ follower. 

I can be stuck on a word – legitimately or not – but in the end, it is the idea of following Christ with dangerous abandon that has my blood flowing with anticipation.  So I guess I am going to continue to be on a mission to discover.  Discover what it means to be me...to find me...to find that me caught in the epicenter...