|
3/30/2018 2 Comments an easter reflectionif you & i sat down when i was six-years-old & you asked me about heaven, i probably would’ve told you that it lies among the stars. that if you squint your eyes & concentrate super hard, you might not only see the world slightly spinning behind the clouds, but you might see the angels soaring, too. i’d tell you that there will be no piano lessons in heaven & there will be no alligators & that i’ll probably have a retainer because my sister has one & that a crescent moon is actually an astronaut’s slide & heaven is just beyond it. that’s where the moon gets its light.
while my ideas on heaven have since grown longer legs & waded into deeper waters, much about it still remains a mystery to me. my knowledge of God is constantly unraveling in my mind, which is exciting most of the time, but also frustrating because He’s constantly evading my categories. i like to have complexities reduced into simple answers & short lists, so to live in the tension of always having more questions about who He is is often uncomfortable. this is just a long-winded way of admitting that i struggle with not having all the answers & my view of God is often based more on my feelings than on truth. sometimes i see God as more like an angry dictator who demands more & more & more from me & throws up His holy hands in divine exasperation when i doubt Him, or when i fall for the same temptation one thousand times over. these thoughts & more stifle me & leave me some mornings waking up with nagging anxiety & pestering guilt. “i think God just wants you to sit still for a second so He can hug you,” a friend told me after i exposed my thoughts to her. she knows me well. while our ideas about God will always remain unfinished, because of the cross & the resurrection there are a few things about Him we can know for sure. i imagine we’ll get to heaven & He’ll embrace us, tell us that we’re home & while we walk with Him weightless, all our earthly burdens & fears & questions evaporated in absolute perfection, He’ll tell us the truth about who we were to Him while we lived. He’ll tell us that there was never a moment we were not delighted in, never a moment where we escaped His loving gaze. He’ll tell us there was never a moment He turned His back away from us, or grew tired of our prayers, or grew frustrated by our recurring questions. He’ll tell us He never once simply tolerated us. He’ll tell us that even during the seasons we ripped our hand out of His & told Him we don’t need His help, He never loved us less. He’ll tell us that the cross made all that possible & that the resurrection is why we celebrate. whatever season we find ourselves this easter weekend, i hope we can revel in the mystery of the cross & the resurrection & rest knowing that because of them, He could not love us any more, nor any less than He does in this moment & we’ll know this to be certain when we find the place that lies past the astronaut’s slide & among the stars & stay there forever.
2 Comments
Bethany
4/2/2018 04:44:53 pm
I am so glad it was encouraging to you Carly!! :) feel free to reach out if you ever need a listening ear. Thank you so much for reading!!
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
October 2020
Categories |