Someday

The best thing about a calendar is that is allows us the gift of anticipation.  No matter how hideous or fantastic today is, tomorrow holds the promise of something better.  The calendar is the producer of endless somedays.

Someday, an eternal day will dawn.  Everything that we know will be made shiny and new.  Every sense will be heightened.

Lilacs will emit a sweetness that can nearly be seen.

Blues and greens will be vibrant enough to nearly hear.

Music will be rich and deep and nearly touchable.

Silk and sandpaper will generate sensations that can nearly be tasted.

The meat of a strawberry will be so robust in flavor that we will swear our tongue were one huge taste bud.

Someday, the feast will begin, and will never end.  Our party clothes will be ever-clean, wrinkle-free, yet comfortable as well-worn flannel pajamas.

My gnarled fingernail that I have nursed since junior high will be smooth and manicured.

The air will be sweet, clear and stench-free. . .  always.

Our scars (not His) will be erased.

Garbage cans will no longer be needed for refuse or for the poverty-stricken to find their daily bread.

Little children will no longer grow dim and die.

Weeds and biting flies will be no more, and never missed.

Someday, the Garden will be re-opened and we will once again walk with God in the cool of the day.  We will be naked and unashamed.  Walls will come down to stand no more.

It will rain exactly when it needs to rain.

I will not sweat or chill.

Our embarrassment will stem from being so blessed, not from being so stupid.

War and murder will be inconceivable concepts.

Blood will be the memory of our redemption, not the stain of our violence.

The voice of God will be heard unfiltered and unfettered, and in hearing Him we will hear one another clearly.

Someday, it will all make sense, even if we don’t understand it.  We may not have complete explanations, but we will have complete peace.  Wisdom will become the living entity which Solomon depicted.  Light will not merely come from Him, it will be Him.

The nagging of my conscience will be replaced by unclouded understanding.

Decisions will not be wrestling matches, but settled instincts.

Truth will be Him, not words in a creed.

Our minds will become the mind of Christ with no deviation.

IQ will be irrelevant.

Questions will have a place to rest.

Someday is coming soon.  Not to a theatre near you, but growing within you.  “The Kingdom is near” Jesus proclaimed, revealing that God was at that very moment beginning the transition to Someday.  The Kingdom-seed had been planted.  Slowly, but consistently, the seed sprouted, shot forth tendrils, bloomed, and flowered toward the day of a fruit harvest.  It is Kingdom-Spring.

Someday is happening around us in the hearts and lives of Kingdom-people.  Someday is emerging around us as God works silently (like leaven, mustard seeds and the like).

And one day, the final Someday will burst forth in full bloom.

Dreams, visions, prophecies, wishes and hopes will become precious diamonds.

We will see Him as He is.

He will mold us as we should be.

Joy, peace, love, grace, and light will become forever bold, underlined and capitalized.

Yesterday will be fitted for new clothes.

And Someday will become Today.

I live in today, but on my calendar I have circled Someday.

Cosmetology at the Funeral Home

I am not the best sleeper, so I will often wake up at night and have these random thoughts which I think, at the time, are rather profound.  The following morning I recall my insomniac insights, and generally discard them as unusable, wacky, or just plain moronic.  You can decide to which category this one belongs.  I apologize in advance for the negative and somewhat gruesome tone of what follows.

We have softened the enemy.  In our quest to discover peace in our souls, we have convinced ourselves that even the harshest moments and circumstances of life have a silver lining.

I hear people say, “Everything happens for a reason.”  The implication is that there is some “hand” (God, destiny, the Force, etc.) which oversees every event and has caused it for a positive purpose.  Sorry.  I disagree.  Sometimes things happen which are purely evil, disgusting, destructive and have absolutely no redeeming value.  I will consent (and believe intensely) that God can take the worst mess and bring blessing and glory out of it.  But some of the horrific things that occur have, at their core, the intent to decimate.

Last weekend I heard a veteran missionary clarify it.  In regard to first-time missionaries entering the mission field, he said, “Satan will not simply cause you some problems.  He will try to destroy you.”  The enemy is DEAD serious.  Ask Job someday.

During one of my sleepless moments I thought about our attempts to soften the devastation of death.  Every year two million American funerals, at an average cost of $6000, are held.  Most of the expense has little to do with disposing of the body.

We have someone clean the body, restore (especially facially) the healthy glow by injecting fluids, filling voids, repairing cuts and scrapes, sewing eyes and mouth shut, and painting on makeup.  We have the body clothed in his/her nicest outfit.

The corpse is laid in an ornate box, lined with fluffy, pastel satin with a pillow for the head.  Surrounding the loved one we have beautiful floral arrangements (another huge expense), soft pink lighting and soothing music.

The cemetery in which the loved one is buried is likely one of the most beautiful pieces of land around – freshly mown, dotted with flowers, and adorned by polished and ornately engraved granite stones set in neat rows.

All of this is done to provide comfort for those suffering the loss.  It makes death bearable.

I realize that these efforts help to calm our raging emotions.  I have conducted and attended enough funerals to know how painful this time can be.  Providing comfort is an important practice in which we must be engaged.

What we have done, however, is to soften brutal reality.  In many other cultures, the corpses, probably due to a lack of financial means, are much more “natural” as they lie on the funeral bier.  The injuries suffered or the signs of disease are unmistakable.  The discoloration of death is gruesomely evident.  Those who mourn are not duped.  Before them lies another victim of the specter.

Have we, through our funeral technology, so softened the punch of death that we do not just provide comfort for the grieving, but we actually have begun to view death as a terrorist with which we can negotiate?

Have death and sin and Hell and Satan become so cartoonish that we accept them without crying out to warn their victims that they are the enemies of a conquering Kingdom?

How much more passion might we possess if we faced death in all of its ugliness?  The shrinking of our world through worldwide media has helped us to see some of the horror more consistently and graphically, but we are still able to dismiss it with a click of the mouse or the remote.  And the appearance of the enemy closer to home has been masked by soft lights and rouge.

The only One who is justified to soften the power of the enemy is Jesus Christ.  He sometimes referred to death as “sleep.”  To the power of the Life-Giver, such a view is understandable.  To we who are weak, death is strong.  But praise to the Resurrected Lord that through Him we conquer.

At the same time, the destructive power of death was never lost on Jesus.  At the tomb of Lazarus Jesus was “deeply moved” (John 11:33, 38) which has been understood as a physical manifestation of grief and/or anger.  Jesus, knowing what He was about to do, nevertheless is emotionally stirred by the ugliness of death and its ability to devastate.  Though He has come to conquer it, He does not underestimate its power and pain.

And so followers of Jesus Christ walk in the light of victory, but we can never lose sight of the darkness from which we have been delivered, or in which others are trapped.  We walk in the light of hope in a land of darkness and death.

Bi-Focularity

Probably not a word.  But it occurred to me one night as I was driving back from Springfield.  Isn’t it amazing how such random thoughts can become fodder for stuff bloggers want to write about?  Aren’t we a pathetic lot?

Anyway, I have worn glasses for about 20 years.  For my first 26 years of breathing I was always proud of my keen eyesight, boasting to those around me who had glasses/contacts that I was never encumbered by these devices, and I didn’t even eat carrots (which, supposedly, are crucial for maintaining healthy vision).  Then things began to get blurry.

I denied it for as long as I could, then went to an optometrist and was astounded at how much detail I wasn’t seeing until I got my first pair of specs.  Ever since, I have had to upgrade the strength of the lenses to keep up with diminishing ocular perception (just thought I’d try out a new phrase).

About three years ago my optometrist – who, by the way, always finds it necessary to tell me a ripping church/minister joke when I plop down in the exam chair – informed me, post-exam, that I was very close to needing bifocals.

How could it be?  One so young and vibrant succumbing to the demons of the geriatric world.  What was next, to be strapped to a gurney, shuttled to the nearest nursing home and condemned to BINGO hell?

As you might guess, I fervently resisted – which I should also do when he begins telling one of his painfully lame jokes – and he suggested that, as a temporary measure, he could either set the strength for near or distant vision.  Which would I prefer?  Being more interested in reading than bird-watching, I had him prepare the new lenses with the prescription needed for sharp “near” vision.

I’ve had him do this for three years.  I am losing ground in the distance.  I have not been unaware of this.  I have intentionally avoided the optometrist’s lair for nearly two years now because I know what is next.  I’m also giving him time to bolster his cache of religious jokes.  In the meantime, my current spectacles provide good mid-range and distant vision, but generally, when reading, I drop my vision and go it sans lenses.

On my recent night drive, to alleviate boredom, I looked at the road ahead first through my glasses, then above them.  I was reminded of my need for vision at both distances.

And that is when I saw something else.  My resistance to see clearly in both ranges is a metaphor for the resistance of so many (myself included) to see the distant layers before us.

Most church members are great as seeing the close things.  We notice when things are not right in terms of our own life, our church’s life, and the lives of those closest to us.  In fact, we don’t just notice, we focus on those areas.  We schedule and navigate our lives according to those areas.

But my eyes and heart were not created to see just what is near.  There are issues and people at a blurry distance which need to be brought into focus.

As I get older, in contrast to my physical sight, my bi-focularity has improved.  I am seeing better both near and far.  I continue to be introspective about my walk with God, striving consistently to honor Him by word, deed and thought.  I also am fairly diligent about keeping my finger on the pulse of my church family, working toward strengthening the Body of Christ in every way I can.  But I am becoming more aware that in the fuzzy distance are people and needs and issues that I cannot ignore.  “Out of sight” is no excuse for “out of mind.”

Often we have to squint as we look beyond the borders of our personal spiritual realm.  The Christian community has not always been good at focusing on the issues and people of the world, though we claim they are the heart of our mission.  Some of the issues we see dimly are the AIDS epidemic, the ravaged environment, family dysfunction, struggles for sexual identity, poverty, human trafficking and genocide, corruption and injustice in various arenas.  Though the horizon may be blurry, nondescript souls cry out.  I may not always see, but I can hear.

Loving and acting in love toward those in the distance is difficult.  Those people and problems “out there” are not on my To-Do List.  They make me uncomfortable.  They make me wince.  Sometimes they make me turn and run.  But my running only enables an escape from the sight of the need, not its existence.  I need new eyes and redirected feet.

Love the brothers?  You bet.  Love the others?  A must.

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’  Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?  And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?  And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’  And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

Matthew 25:34-40

Consumer or Steward?

A quick heart/mind check.  When you receive your paycheck or are blessed by an unexpected monetary gift, what is your first thought?

• How will I spend it?
• How will I save it?
• How will I give it away?

Just wondering.  I am convicted.