Have you ever wished you could go back to a particular situation? Or a moment in time?
When everything seemed good. Really good.
Deeply good. (Or not, and then, "course correct"?)
I wonder what we would do differently, if anything.
If we would still end up where we are today.
I wonder.
How about you?
So, I am having a conversation with myself today. It goes like this:
It does no good to think about going back when it is not possible. Even if I look back and try to learn from the situation or event, everything about it becomes unfamiliar in the present tense, because people have changed. Physical places - altered. The sun rises and sets, repeatedly, and the earth spins me into another time.
Yes, there eludes a permanence that would be necessary to re-invent.
Does this sound discouraging? I am tempted here to be sad - to wear sadness like a shirt and pants, my feet trimmed in its matching sandals, like name-brand sorrow. But I think it is only truly so if our means to permanence is fixated upon the transient stuff of a world passing us by - people, places, events: children, parents, friends; momentary laughter, fleeting hugs, conversations like snapshots in time or memory.
But, oh, not discouraging when we behold something lasting:
Grace and her family, oh, eternal relevance - permanence.
Do you see them?
Grace and her twin, Mercy, pour down over our heads like rain water cascading from a cliff.
Have you stepped into it lately? Have you stood there, letting them massage and pound the sore out of your soul? Are you soaked to the bone, hopeful, again, now offering hope unreservedly as you step forward into the new day.
Oh, but where do these, Grace and Mercy, dwell? And from where do they cascade? You may ask. It is important to ask, important to know.
To discover, yes.
Here is a good place to go, to know:
- The Gospel of John -
Yes, John knew about permanence and transience.
He knew what it was to be loved - permanently, perfectly, beyond sin and error.
May you be richly blessed as you discover.
