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| How little I know... | | Date Created: Jul 12, 2004, 08:31 PM |
 ...but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.
I Corinthians 13:10 NIV
When my mother's mother died last summer the popular praise song "I Can Only Imagine" took on new meaning to me. Grandma been confined to a paralyzed body and silent world for nearly five years, so as I heard the words "Will I dance for you Jesus, or in awe of you be still?" I envisioned my precious "Graham" swinging to the Charleston and laughing with great joy at the amazing freedom her new body was allowing her in heaven. I pictured her throwing her hands up, no longer rigid, and delighting at her renewed personhood! But whatever my imagination could concoct cannot come near to what heaven must really be like. How can I, stuck to the ground by gravity, understand the release of death? How can I possibly imagine with a brain that doesn't function at full capacity, things that are not of this world or of its laws? What on earth resembles the heavenly in the slightest?
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.
Verse 11a
I remember being told by my mother during a particularly painful heartbreak in my high school years that the people who seemed so central to my life then would not be around later. I thought she was heartless and insensitive, but now that I am in my mid-thirties I hold dear only one friend from those days of paramount importance and recognize in Mom's advice assurance that better relationships and experiences were ahead. How could I have imagined the depth of relationships I was yet to encounter? It is like a veil lifted from my face revealing deeper truths once my ten-year reunion passed. I thought everything in my environment was critical when I was fifteen; it was dramatized foolishness to my wiser parent, but how could I possibly have understood?
When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
Verse 11b
Before I got married I felt like an expert at relationships. I'd been in and out of enough of them! Oh, I was experienced and mature. I was ready and eager. My mother was terrified for me. As one who had been through divorce, she worried that I didn't understand the responsibilities of lifelong commitment ahead. During our honeymoon cruise I melted in a pool of dumbfounded confusion. Why wasn't I able to master this? How could it be so rough so quickly? I had believed that any marriage between two people could survive with resolve and faith. Then I discovered that married life is the greatest relational challenge invented. It requires unparalleled self-sacrifice. It requires acrobatic negotiation. Marriage humbles you to a point of tears some days.
But I have fallen off the couch laughing so hard with my husband and best friend that I thought I'd split right down my side. The overwhelming unity I feel with him when we have found our way together to agreement feels like a peek at heaven. If only everyone could have it this grand! We have put our share of work into developing what we share. As the literal bridal veil was lifted from my face on my wedding day, it symbolically represented the taking away of naivite. No matter how much I heard from others, I did not appreciate the discipline of marriage until I walked through it myself.
[Love] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Verse 7
I have cared for dozens of children through my life. As I became a teenager I took on the responsibility for three children while their parents went out for an evening date, and I loved the job so much I signed on with family after family for thirteen years. I was a nanny, a mother?s helper, a professional and volunteer childcare provider. I loved children; or so I thought. But how could I possibly have understood love at all until that moment when my own firstborn one-year-old threw a temper tantrum during his first disciplinary "time-out" and I had to help him work through his frustration? I looked at him and held his hand and waited out his screaming until he calmly realized that increasing his volume would not speed my response. In that moment I loved him more than I had yet, because I watched him grow through a difficult lesson, and I was the one responsible to help him work it out. The future decisions he makes will be, in great part, dependent on the choices I make in his upbringing. I must protect him. I must trust God with his safety. I must hope for his best possible future at every moment. I must never give up.
An entire sphere of life was hidden from me until I became a mother. No matter how many children I took under my wing as a babysitter, nothing compared to parenthood. How could I have known, even in part? How could I have comprehended this adoration, effusive, overflowing, overabundant?
Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
Verse 12
Throughout our lives one layer after another falls away as new milestones come and go. We think we know how the future will appear. We think we are prepared. We think we understand our elder authorities' perspectives. We plan. We dream. We imagine.
Truly? We don't understand a glimpse of what lies ahead here on earth or in heaven. So, we might try to draw out in our minds streets of gold and jeweled crowns, unique castles, angels, God?but whatever we attempt to wrap our minds around doesn't compare to what is ahead by even a shadow.
When I became a mother my own mom got a new title, too: "Grandmother." Until I see my own firstborn's firstborn I cannot comprehend the overwhelming adoration she feels for my child. He is new hope. A new life. A new future. He is a miracle. I see this, myself, but feel somehow that her senses of these realities are heightened. What do I know of it? Nothing. Yet.
?where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
Verse 8b
What awesome truth. I know nothing of the future. I know so little of heaven. I can only dream and trust that it is grander and wider and deeper than my deepest, widest, grandest dreams!
That gives me the freedom to relax in my life. It gives me liberty to accept even difficult days as fleeting. I am able to have a godly perspective on seemingly lofty priorities of the natural world, seeing in context that all things will work together for me, so long as I listen, trust and follow. I can rest in the gift of peace even amid chaos.
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
Jeremiah 29:11
Just as each new milestone of your life has taken you by surprise, you must trust that the turns and bends ahead will also be astonishing! Delight in the not knowing until you arrive at the next destination. Focus on your today and every gift given for this moment and time.
Maybe you are single. What freedom you have to serve God with your whole heart and without distraction! Take this time to be satisfied with yourself, because the stronger you are individually the better you can serve the Lord now and in the future, whether or not you find a life mate. The key word is satisfaction.
Maybe you're newly wed. Slow down and get to know your spouse. If children are in your future these moments together are vital to building a solid foundation for your growing family. Don't rush off and leave your partner behind. Value each other. You chose one another and now you have a responsibility to grow together, casting distractions aside. Help the other feel loved. Remembered. Honored. Be content with your helpmate.
Perhaps you're in school, studying with your eyes taped open. Soak it all in. Don't squander the gift of your education. Trust what you're being taught, but test it for yourself, as well, until it becomes real and true for you. Your mind is perfectly fertile for the hatching of creative ideas about your path ahead. Dream large dreams for yourself! Keep your eyes wide open for possibilities and grab at them with your whole heart when they appear before you.
Or you're a sleep-deprived new parent. You've sickened of the cliché ?They grow so fast,? and yet?you're finding that to be true. Do everything in your power to spend as much time as possible with your child in her first few years. Through these moments you will teach her how responsive God is to her needs by your own responsiveness. She will look to you for boundaries and permissions. She will mimic your actions and your words, as we are to mimic our heavenly Father. Make certain the words she hears the most are yours and are edifying?not the television set or the voices of a rotating door of childcare workers. You have been given this gift for this moment. In eighteen years you will want to gather it all back up again and wrap yourself with memories. Celebrate parenthood for all that it is.
You might even have been recently retired or widowed, disabled or unemplyed. I have not been where you are, yet, but I understand even now that each phase of life holds tremendous potential for the expansion of our horizons. What we must do when our vision is clouded is realize there is a veil to be removed. Ask Jesus to help you peel it away so that you can see with new eyes whatever he longs to bring to you.
Most importantly, do not fear uncertainty no matter what phase you are living now! There is so much more to learn. There is so much more that you cannot see. Yet.
Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."
James 4:13-15a
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