I am completely exhausted. Strange how creativity abounds when stress is at its peak and energy at its lowest.
Libby asked me to come see her play-fort in the woods. I squeezed my socked feet into clogs that were too small for me, pulled my winter coat over my pajamas and followed her outside. We ducked under limbs, hopped over logs, and gingerly stepped around sprawling thorn bushes until we reached the place. Libby's little hideout.
It was a fallen tree whose twisted trunk was bent in just the right way to lend itself to her imagination. I remember how that felt. No longer the ghost of a tree, but rather a glowing kingdom nestled in the deep woods. She stopped chattering, and in the stillness we heard the distant rushing of the swollen creek.
As we turned to go back I felt the grandeur of the play-world falling away, left behind in the shaded corpse of a fallen tree.
The real house soon appeared through the trees, looming bigger and more solid than I remembered. We tumbled inside the door with cold, red faces and hands. The warmth settled in slowly.
We live in the deep woods, Christian. We live where our cold, red hands seize a twisted log, and something about it whispers that we were made for another Place. The fallen corpse of this shadow-life is bent in just the right way to jog our memories, and in the barren coldness we find that our play-fort is calling us Home.
Sometimes it feels like the point of all of this is to test how much of my heart can be fixed on something my eyes have never seen. As more and more of my being is burned up by faith, it's as if the eternity part of me becomes more real than the parts that see, taste, touch, hear, or smell. It's as if I am constantly stepping further out onto a Bridge I can't see, but it's the most solid and secure Thing I've ever known, and the ground I left behind looks frail and transparent in comparison.
We studied the description of the Throne Room in Revelation on Sunday. As my family went forward to take communion, it felt like the Throne Room had somehow invaded our hushed auditorium, and we all knew...how to describe it? ....We all just knew that we were made for a different Place. We were tired of the play-fort. We wanted the real Kingdom.
We knelt as a family at the communion table, and as I looked around at their faces I felt that we were so far from Home. Our bodies and clothing and the carpeted floor seemed to be alien and foreign rather than things I had known from the beginning. The bread and little plastic cups of juice were singing to us about a different climate--older, newer, lovelier than anything we had known, but somehow Home to our weary, sojourning souls--and they sang because they bought us passage.
A plucky stink bug crawled across the communion table. It occurred to me that this ugly insect knew as much about the Treasure of Christ's body and blood as I know about the Throne Room, and the distance between the stink bug and me is far, far less than the distance between me and Holy, Holy, Holy. Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, for only He was worthy to open the scroll and purchase souls from so far away.
One day we will see the real House looming above the naked trees, and we will tumble inside the Door and let the warmth settle in. Scars we thought we'd always have will be healed, and our tears of longing will have served their purpose. The Bride's cold, red hands will be gently taken by her real Husband, and the shadow-world will fall behind her as she looks ahead to the Long Hello.
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