Things have been difficult lately, but a change is in the air. I am sure I am not alone in feeling like this. But I have been working very hard on a project that I feel urgent about, and despite the knowledge that I am supposed to be working on it, and though I have been working long hours, I have felt like much of what I am doing is going nowhere: I write a thousand words, then I go back and edit a thousand words out.
I am tired. I mean, literally, I can’t seem to find time to sleep. I don’t have insomnia or anything like that; I can sleep just fine when things slow down around me or I have a moment to relax, it’s just that I have a sense of urgency. I have to finish things.
I got up very early this morning to work on another project. I wanted to sleep, but I kept waking up repeatedly with an idea that I was supposed to make something. So I got up and began to work.
But as I worked, and used up the last of some of my materials, and was lifting up the thing I had made, it fell out of my hands. It was as if it had been dashed out of my hands. In an instant, all of it was destroyed.
My first thought was that I couldn’t make it again. And I became angry, mostly at myself. Everything that I had done was in vain.
But in the next second, the verse came into my mind, “All things work together for good, to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
So I repented of my anger, feeling so foolish, and wondering if maybe I misunderstood what I was supposed to be doing in the first place. But when I thought back, I knew I had done exactly what I was supposed to do. And so, according to the scripture, it was allowed by God that it failed and it was for his purpose. I needed to let it go.
It was warm inside, so I walked out to get some air. It was still dark in most of the sky, and I could see bats swooping around in one last attempt to catch something before their bedtime. The sky was completely covered with clouds.
I thought about letting things go. We hold onto so many things that don’t even matter: The memory of pain, of wrongs, or even of accomplishments that one could argue were good things. But what will last after all of is over? Even good things will perish in the presence of the perfect. What can possibly last?
Love. Love is eternal.
I remembered reading that in an old book I found yesterday, one that belonged to my Aunt Faith. The cover had caught my eye: It was white embossed with gold and pale green, in my favorite art nouveau style. The design was of three Easter lilies before a cross. I picked it up and it fell open to where she had pressed a leaf. Many of the sentences were underlined in pencil.
“Surely it stands to reason that only a fuller love can compete with the love of the world,” I read. “To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up with love. We want to live forever for the same reason that we want to live tomorrow. Why do you want to live tomorrow? It is because there is someone who loves you, and whom you want to see tomorrow, and be with, and love back. There is no other reason why we should live on than that we love and are beloved.”
My dear Aunt Faith, who felt so unloved much of her life, had underlined these words.
“Eternal life also is to know God, and God is love. This is Christ’s own definition. Ponder it. ‘This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.’ Love must be eternal. It is what God is. On the last analysis then, love is life.”
I thought of Genesis 2:7, the passage describing how God formed man from the clay, then breathed into him the breath of life. Breath = spirit; life = love. God put his spirit of love inside us in the beginning, and when Adam rejected obedience (which is how we show God our love), then he rejected life. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 6:23
I read some more underlined words in the little book: “No worse fate can befall a man in this world than to live and grow old alone, unloving, and unloved. To be lost is to live in an unregenerate condition, loveless and unloved; and to be saved is to love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God. For God is Love.”
Life is love. Love (God) is eternal. Eternal life is being with God, loving and being loved.
I was thinking all of these things while looking out into the gloom, searching for the early morning light. A bird or two had begun to give a sleepy call, and that gave me courage to continue looking. They knew something that I only hoped to find.
And that was when I saw it, a little smudge of peach along the side of one long strip of cloud. I judged the angle and looked to the east for the source of the peach light. There it was: A slight break in the cloud that let the early reflected light of the sun through.
When I looked back down at the yard, I realized that in that moment, the whole sky had lightened. The bats were gone, and I could see the objects around me much better. The sky was still covered in clouds, but there was the pre-dawn light in the sky that I knew so well.
I had another one of those feelings that showed me right where we are. Can you see how things are becoming light all around us? Do you see things more clearly that used to be shrouded in darkness? I know that I do. The feeling of hope is in the air, for when it is just inky black, anything could be true and how would we know? We are blind in the utter darkness. But when the light appears, its coming is irrevocable. You cannot take back what it exposes.
There is the railing; there is the step. I begin to see where to walk now. I reach for my phone and snap a picture. The clouds are crowding in again, and now it is all gray once more. But the sky is lighter, and getting more light every moment. The sun is coming, and what are mere clouds in the presence of the sun?
I thought of the passage in Psalm 19:1 and 5. “The heavens declare the glory of God. . .in them [the heavens] hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. . . .”
The sun comes toward us like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber–to marry his bride! And in terms of the scripture, the bridegroom is a metaphor for Jesus Christ, who will soon return to claim his bride, his body, his Church!
“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Comfort one another with these words.” (I Thessalonians 4: 16 – 18)
Comfort one another: Oh be comforted, for the Lord Jesus Christ is coming!
“In him is LIFE, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” (John 1:4-5)
The Fullers Four 