The introvert this side of eternity



If you’ve watched the new Disney Pixar movie “Inside Out” you might understand a little how people turn out to be the way they are. We all have voices in our heads trying to point us in a particular direction. It’s not always as straightforward as the angel on your right shoulder and the imp on the left. Sometimes you’re a boiling pot of different flavours, each trying to make their scent known.

In the movie, you have different voices – Joy, Anger, Sadness, Disgust, and Fear. Joy attempts to be the leader of the voices, always trying to let you focus on the “yellow-er” side of things. All memories should be yellow, sunlight. Anger is the non-thinker, provocation gets immediate reaction. Sadness is how you’d picture an introvert; quiet, low, thinking about why things are how they are. Disgust reacts when she doesn’t like something, fear is always apprehensive.

It’s not easy being an introvert. It feels like Sadness is the one in the driving seat and your memories are blue. You think about everything. Your most important question in life is not what, where, when, who or how, it’s why. When you consider the other questions, eventually you also get into the whys.
Life seems easier for the extrovert. The extrovert draws and demands from without, yet the introvert draws and demands from within. There must be meaning to things.

Living on the side of eternity that I am – this issue would seem to have been solved. However, it’s not as easy as that.
Crossing into eternity means entering a door. It means using a narrow path of which it was said
“This new way of life is so narrow that we cannot take ourselves into it, we have to leave ourselves behind” – T. Austin Sparks
It requires a certain amount of coming to an end of yourself.
"For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Matthew 16:25

Cue Michael Jackson’s “Man in the mirror”. So many times, we think it’s a matter of learning people skills, becoming cocky and funny, enduring a little discomfort so you can become better. We think it’s changing our tone and things like that.
There’s a scene in Inside Out, where Riley is going through a lot and is on the brink of “losing it” when her mom comes to talk to her and thanks her for being patient. Her mood changes immediately.
The impact of love on everyone is so grand.  And love is not work.

Gal 5:22  But the fruit of the Spirit is: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
In a way I feel like that scripture has the colon in the wrong place, but that’s me – love is like a container of every bit of the life eternal – when you think of it, and compare that scripture with 1 Cor 13 you might agree
1 Cor 13 4-7 Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love is the man that must live, I am the man that must die. I, the 100 percent introvert who sees things as blue. It’s a crucifixion that happened that I must reckon lest I live Inside Out as if it were a true reflection of this life eternal.

Gal 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.

The writer of this article, Joel Benjamin Ntwatwa is a blogger. He loves literature, African literature, and is reading more of it lately even participating in the Africa Reading Challenge. He has experience in Social Media, Content Management, and graphics ….He writes about his experience with see(k)ing God, creative fictional prose and poetry,  and on numerous topical issues at nevender.com

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