The Key to Paradise

            There’s a country song that’s popular right now by the Zac Brown Band with Jimmy Buffett.  The song is called “Knee Deep”.  If you’ve not heard it before, you can listen to it here. I’ve also included the lyrics below.

Gonna put the world away for a minute
Pretend I don't live in it
Sunshine gonna wash my blues away
Had sweet love but I lost it
She got too close so I fought it
Now I'm lost in the world tryin to find me a better way

Wishin' I was
Knee deep in the water somewhere
got the blue sky, breeze and it don't seem fair
the only worry in the world
is the tide gonna reach my chair
Sunrise, there's a fire in the sky
never been so happy
never felt so high
and I think I might have found me my own kind of paradise

Wrote a note, said "Be back in a minute"
Bought a boat and I sailed off in it
Don't think anybody's gonna miss me anyway
Mind on a permanent vacation
The ocean is my only medication
Wishin' my condition ain't ever gonna go away

Now I'm knee deep in the water somewhere
Got the blue sky, breeze blowin' wind thru my hair
Only worry in the world
is the tide gonna reach my chair
Sunrise, there's a fire in the sky
never been so happy
never felt so high
and I think I might have found me my own kind of paradise

This champagne shore washin' over me
It's a sweet, sweet life livin' by the salty sea
One day you can be as lost as me
Change your geography and maybe you might be

Knee deep in the water somewhere
got the blue sky, breeze blowin' wind thru my hair
only worry in the world
is the tide gonna reach my chair
Sunrise, there's a fire in the sky
never been so happy
never felt so high
and I think I might have found me my own kind of paradise

Come on in
the waters nice
find yourself a little slice
grab a backpack
otherwise you'll never know until you try
when you lose yourself
you find the key to paradise

What does paradise mean to you?  Maybe it’s what the song says:  stepping out of the world, going off to a beach where no one can find you, with nothing to do but just relax and look out over the water.

I have to admit there are times when that sounds tempting.  I’m not complaining, but I get pretty busy sometimes.  I’ll bet you do, too.  There are times when it sounds like it would be really nice to just leave the world behind and get away from everything.

For me, though, those times don’t last too long.  For one thing, I really like what I do.  I like writing and preaching sermons.  I like visiting with people.  I like working on projects to grow the church and spread God’s love.  I like writing this blog.  It’s rare when my job requires me to do something I really don’t want to do.

For another thing, I think people are designed to want to accomplish something with their lives.  We want to feel that we’re making a contribution to something, that our lives make a positive difference to someone or something.  Just sitting on the beach staring out at the water, as nice as that might be for a little while, would not be a very productive life, and I think most of us would get bored with it eventually.

There’s at least one more thing about that vision of paradise that sounds unappealing to me:  the loneliness of it.  This paradise does not seem to have room in it for anyone but the person telling the story.  Again, while most of us have times when we dream of getting away from it all, most of us were not designed to live our lives alone.  We need other people, whether they’re family or friends or someone else.  People were not designed to live their lives in vacuums.

There is one thing about this song I like, though.  Look at the last two lines.  “When you lose yourself, you find the key to paradise.”  I think there’s a lot of meaning in that line, maybe more than the songwriter intended.

It seems to me that one of the biggest barriers to our happiness on earth is ourselves.  Not always, and not all the time; we all have times when we get knocked down by things we can’t control.  A lot of times, though, our own desires get in the way of our happiness:  our ambition, our pride, our envy, our selfishness.  We keep thinking “If only I had this, I’d be happy.  If only this would happen, I’d be happy.”  Then we get what we want, and we suddenly decide want something else.  We get in our own way.

If we could lose ourselves, lose that ambition and pride and envy and selfishness, and just surrender to God’s will, we would be a lot happier.  The earth might not be a paradise, but it would be a lot closer for a lot of us.  Not only would we get out of our own way, but we’d feel the satisfaction and peace of being in tune with God and following God’s will.

Let’s try to lose ourselves.  We just might find that it really is the key to paradise, both in this world and the next one.