A Second Spans Eternity

 A second spans eternity.

It began to form as I looked at a wreath this Christmas; jagged edges each twig digging deep within his brow. Sparsity of air, silence on his breath, we hung our wreath as a welcome on our front door, His eyes piercing our home.

Time lifted, as he was born, he lived, he died; as he had died he was alive – and everything between like a movie scene gifted me with eyes to see, and seeing, I see again.

I saw his face, and then hers – the one who entombed the word within. Too much unseen; galaxies being formed, hearts being changed, this heart full of shame, rearranging, rearranged.

Did tiny fingers draw streams for the dessert to sea into oceans to the skies as we were born and reborn in his reign? Tiny hands carving law into stone into nations into hearts bringing freedom, holding love, flesh as ransom for this heart of stone. Does his presence like a dove descend to tents in the desert, into cities into continents, and call one space his Holy home? This tent his Holy home?

Did she ponder in his birth, his last breath brought her back; final cries as He finished what he had said, in the arms of the Father turning, twisting and singing this place into bread, into life, the bread of life. In her arms, the arms of the Father.

Eternity spans a second.

The journey, the great return, and everything in between.

 The fear was never that they were doing what they did. The fear was that doing what they did would lead to other unthinkable things – like a gateway drug to addiction; the beginning of a journey with no way back.

Maybe there is no way back – but in moving forward, we can loop around to where the journey began, and choose a new way. And in that mistake, choose another. Maybe the journey is through fear with the outcome never quite being what it should be – but this being a symptom of something much deeper.

Maybe the symptom of never quite arriving points us to something not present to the eye, touch, smell or heard. Maybe it points to an underlying world in what could be and should be but will never be until the great return. Maybe the longing for the great return is what keeps us going, the chase of the could be and will be. A single line with the worst and best outcomes above and below, just a fall or jump away – a push or lift away. Or is the line right where we have been lifted or pushed, and we are right where we should be?

The parodical son had a way back – did he return from his journey in the way that he came? The woman at the well had a new start, was her new point of reference the well or her home? The stone dropped with a mass exit of religion in freedom to go do what is good, true, right and loved – because of love.

Isn’t that the way fear works – irreversible consequences – no way back to the beginning – like a choice turned, or a word lingering too long to settle; the regret of a line walked, a life lived, a journey travelled.

The journey, the great return, and everything in between.

Thoughts of Redemption

 

We have not been popular in days past of different. We have not done well with question askers and truth tellers even when they are part of the family. 

Is it control? Is it fear? Is it lack of understanding or desire to understand? Do we fear walking outside of the lines, or finding at the end of our questions we were all wrong? Do we fear being wrong? Are we too stuck in our own way of thinking to walk with another in theirs? 

Is it important to always be right? Is it ok to fall back on grace and apologize or ask for help in the wrong? Is there a right and a wrong; or it is all being redeemed - One question at a time? Is it our place to judge redemption in process? Because all redemption is in process, and arrival if you live in or outside of time. Nothing is stagnant, all is in movement and redemption is a perpetual beam of light in one direction both going and coming from God. 

God does not step outside of our redemption, or away from us when we can’t see. He is both the beginning and the end of it - the chasing in between. 

Stuck in our way of thinking they are outside of the redeemed. Stuck thinking that there is a them and us - like days of old when the law made sense until redemption made a visit and brought redemption in reduction, and freedom in failure.

Let us be popular in days ahead. Popular with the way we discern and listen; the way we treat every person at their table, and those we have not yet invited.

Let us surrender. Let us be fully in the light. Let us put aside our need to be right and enter into unfathomed grace and love. Let us walk with the one who made us, our maker and find that we had it all wrong. Let us laugh at pride and the way we once thought. Let us learn, together – taught by the one that made our minds.

I can’t do this anymore. I can’t unsee what is now seen. A cost will come, a cost already paid, its ok when few understand.

The days ahead are bright and light and walking in and outside the line of redemption you will find us. The question askers, the truth tellers – laughing at the way it was when we only walked the line.