It was one year ago. For some reason, I knew I needed to go running at the bay a mile down from my apartment. A nudging, I guess. As I started out in the cold afternoon, I ran past the Hilton hotel and then down to a big grassy area overlooking Mission Bay. The cloudy sky and sparkling water with geese flying overhead reminded me of a Nicholas Sparks movie. It was beautiful, felt almost romantic! But at the same time, it felt a little bit unreal. I had one of those conversations with God. Not an audible one, but the kind where I felt pretty sure we were talking. One of those moments of deep calling out to deep. What do you want me to do God? If I’m here for a purpose, then what is it?
The red light on the top of the Sky Tower at Sea World was blinking. Look at that light, I heard Him say. As I began to look at the light, I started to become distracted by other runners, moms and dads with children, lovers holding hands, tourists visiting San Diego, fit joggers with their dogs. No, God whispered, YOU look at the light. But God, the world is happening around me, I argued with my Maker. And then He said it. The thing I haven’t forgotten since: “Emily, this is not it. This is not it.”
I will never forget that moment.
On Thursday mornings I am involved in an inductive Bible study at my church on the book of Hebrews. We’ve actually been in the study for over a year now, but with all of the word studies and cross-referencing, we’re only in chapter 9! I’ve learned a thousand things, but one in particular has stuck out to me recently. Hebrews 9 uses words like copy, shadow, symbol to describe how the old testament tabernacle, laws, and covenant was merely a representation of what was to come. The ten commandments and laws on sacrifice were given as a tutor to define (and help restrain) sin, but they were not the fulfillment of the covenant God made with Abraham— a covenant based on HIS own Word and oath, that He would bless Abraham and all nations through him! Or God’s promise and prophesying through Jeremiah and Ezekiel to replace in the hearts of His children their heart of stone with a heart of flesh that His law was written on, and His Spirit put in. The law, sacrifices, and tabernacle were simply a shadow of Christ’s coming!
I was reading C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory yesterday. A chapter that I’ve recently revisited (and still struggle to understand!) is called “Transposition.” The idea of transposition is that what we, as humans, experience in life is merely a taste, a reflection, an image, a symbol or shadow, of what real, REAL, reality is. He tells this story:
A young pregnant woman is imprisoned for a crime. She gives birth to a son and lives there with him her whole life. However, she was an artist and was allowed to bring her paper and pencils into the prison. The son knows nothing of the outside world, but his mother attempts to teach him about it by drawing pictures of mountains and streams, oceans and animals, cities and towns. However, she realizes that her son thinks that these things drawn with her pencil are really made of pencil marks in the outside world. “You mean, these things are not made up of pencil marks?” the son asks his mother. He could not comprehend that there was a bigger reality than what those pencil marks represented. He believed his mother, but he couldn’t comprehend it.
In the same way, I wonder if God looks on us with a parental-type compassion. How I wish you could understand, He whispers, even pleads, that THIS is not it. This world, with its pencil marks of reality, is not the complete “reality,” but merely a picture of it.
Wow. Yeah, it convicts me every time.
The things that I want to have, to become, to be known as, really will all fade away. I wonder what works I’m doing will actually last through eternity. I’m a language person, not a mathematical, but if I were to compare the duration of time, eternity seems to make the life I spend here on earth as if it’s nothing! And for the rest of the rest of the rest of my life, I will be living in a reality I cannot comprehend here, but I believe in. It is coming.
I also like to see the symbolism here on earth for what things we will experience in heaven. Work, creativity, mystery and revealing, rejoicing and worship, satisfaction, relationships, family. Hmmmm . . . oh, what will it be like? When we are there forever? When we really see? When we are in that dimension that our minds cannot comprehend now? When we are with the lover of our souls that our hearts desire so much?
Oh yes, I have hope, I have expectation, anticipation, and desire. I have those moments, those glimpses of something to come. My heart jumps at them. A horrifying, yet absolutely exhilarating, sensation washes over me at the thought of them. But, they are few and far between. I do live in this “image of reality” now. And, so as I live here, I ask for wisdom, patience, and endurance Father. Teach us to hold out, to hold on, for that time. That great marriage feast where we will meet you face to face, and know You, our sweet sweet husband as the greatest thing we could ever desire. And though I ask for patience, I also ask for you to increase my desire for you God, more and more, ever and ever. Never let us stop desiring You. And teach us and strengthen our hope that we may study Your Word to know You, as YOU really are.
Come, Lord Jesus, Come.
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