This blog of mine has collected some dust. I have been woefully inattentive, but life has been filled with a myriad of other things. I just returned from a tour of Russia, and tonight I play a world premier performance of a triple concerto for brass. Prior to that, life was filled with preparation for a recital and completion of our negotiations. It's been a very busy summer.

Today I also received an email from an eHarmony woman who has decided to move on. Not a big deal--there was very minimal interaction, but I was anticipating getting to know her on the heels of this concerto performance. I was looking forward to it quite a bit since my life has been so consumed with work related obligations.

It seems to me that all that we desire, and all of the promises of God that we long to have fulfilled are the very things God asks us to place on the altar. I believe that God has called me to a married life. Each day I hope that my wife will enter my life. There are glimmers of possibility that emerge from time to time, but for two decades, every door that has ever opened with hopeful possibility has been slammed shut. I do not understand why this is so, yet the only answer that I can find is that this is God's will.

When I think of Abraham's willingness to offer his son Isaac on the altar, the son who represented the fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham, I realize that I must follow his example. I am beginning to believe that God calls me to live in daily hope that today might be the day, but that I must place that hope on the altar each and every day. Unlike in Abraham's case, however, God doesn't always give us back what we place on the altar, at least in the way we expect, or in the same way that Isaac was given back to Abraham.

There are times when I become cynical and wish that I could excise this desire I have for companionship, since life would be easier. I believe that God has placed this desire within me, and I realize that it would be sinful to shut it down, or to eliminate the daily hope and prayer I have that I might meet my wife today. We all carry daily crosses, and I'm becoming to realize that perhaps my vocation right now is to be a man who desperately longs to be married, and nurture the hope that it will happen, while living with the possibility that it may not happen for a long time, and the subsequent disappointment that comes from actively pursuing women with the hopes that perhaps "this is the one." If that's the case, then for some divine reason, I'm better off to the Kingdom as a man who is single and longs for marriage.

Though I'd like to be married yesterday, I've read someplace before that God's ways aren't our ways.