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speak friend and enter
понедельник, февраля 28, 2005
Community and A Full Heart
(excerpt fr "Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them", John Ortberg, pp 41.
What does a full heart look like? Brennan Manning tells the story of a man named Ed Farrel, who traveled from his home in Detroit to spend a two-week vacation in Ireland to celebrate his uncle's eightieth birthday. When the great day dawned, Ed and his uncle rose early to greet the sun. They walked along the shores of Lake Killarney, loving the emerald green grass and crystal blue waters. For twenty minutes they watched the scene together in silence. Then the uncle began to do an unusual thing for an eighty-year-old man: He began to skip along the shore of the lake, smiling like a schoolboy in love. Ed was puffing hard as he tried to catch up to him.
"Uncle Seamus, you look very happy. Do you want to tell me why?"
"Yes," said the old man, tears running down his face. "You see, the Father is very fond of me. Ah, me Father is so very fond of me."
So it is in the Fellowship of the Trinity: "The Father is very fond of me." This is the fellowship into which we are invited - one that can make eighty-year-old hearts laugh and cry and dance for the sheer joy of being loved. We were not made for loneliness; we were made for this joy.
When Jesus prays for us to be invited into the divine circle, it is not a casual request. There is an enormous price to be paid for our admittance. The Son will go to the cross. The Father - who had known nothing from all eternity but perfect intimacy with his Son - will now see his Beloved suffer the anguish and alienation of sin. The Spirit will come to earth and allow himself to be quenched and grieved by human beings.
At enormous cost to every member of th Trinity, you and I have been welcomed to the eternal circle, to be held in the heart of the Father, Son, Spirit.
Therefore, to fail to prize community; to tolerate disunity with the people God loves - particularly disunity in the body of Christ; or to do things that could lead to disunity is utterly unthinkable.
To allow or contribute to disunity in this fellowship is to be fundamentally at odds with the purpose of God in human history. It may be common in our world, but it is not normal in God's eyes.
(excerpt fr "Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them", John Ortberg, pp 41.
What does a full heart look like? Brennan Manning tells the story of a man named Ed Farrel, who traveled from his home in Detroit to spend a two-week vacation in Ireland to celebrate his uncle's eightieth birthday. When the great day dawned, Ed and his uncle rose early to greet the sun. They walked along the shores of Lake Killarney, loving the emerald green grass and crystal blue waters. For twenty minutes they watched the scene together in silence. Then the uncle began to do an unusual thing for an eighty-year-old man: He began to skip along the shore of the lake, smiling like a schoolboy in love. Ed was puffing hard as he tried to catch up to him.
"Uncle Seamus, you look very happy. Do you want to tell me why?"
"Yes," said the old man, tears running down his face. "You see, the Father is very fond of me. Ah, me Father is so very fond of me."
So it is in the Fellowship of the Trinity: "The Father is very fond of me." This is the fellowship into which we are invited - one that can make eighty-year-old hearts laugh and cry and dance for the sheer joy of being loved. We were not made for loneliness; we were made for this joy.
When Jesus prays for us to be invited into the divine circle, it is not a casual request. There is an enormous price to be paid for our admittance. The Son will go to the cross. The Father - who had known nothing from all eternity but perfect intimacy with his Son - will now see his Beloved suffer the anguish and alienation of sin. The Spirit will come to earth and allow himself to be quenched and grieved by human beings.
At enormous cost to every member of th Trinity, you and I have been welcomed to the eternal circle, to be held in the heart of the Father, Son, Spirit.
Therefore, to fail to prize community; to tolerate disunity with the people God loves - particularly disunity in the body of Christ; or to do things that could lead to disunity is utterly unthinkable.
To allow or contribute to disunity in this fellowship is to be fundamentally at odds with the purpose of God in human history. It may be common in our world, but it is not normal in God's eyes.
суббота, февраля 05, 2005
The Fellowship of the Mat
Excerpts from Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them, John Ortberg
One of the great stories in the Bible about community involves a paralyzed man and the friends who brought him to Jesus.
His whole life is lived out on a mat three feet wide and six feet long. Someone has to feed him, carry him, clothe him, move him to keep him from being covered with bedsores, clean him when he soils himself. He will never know the sense of independence we price so fiercely.
He has no money, no job, no influence, no family, and seemingly not much of a future. His “as-is” tag is three feet wide and six feet long.
What’s he got going for them? He has friends. He has amazing friends.
He’s in one of the killer small groups of all time.
Everybody Has a Mat
Think about what the paralyzed man goes through in order to be friends with this group of men.
He must have wrestled with his sense of independence sometimes. I suspect at times he became jealous of their independence, since after they had been together, everyone could walk home but him. Sometimes he must have wished in the secret places of his heart that he could trade places with one of them. He must have struggled with how they saw him in his neediness.
It is a very vulnerable thing to have someone carry your mat. When somebody’s carrying your mat, they see you in your weakness. They might hurt you if they drop you.
A Community of Roof-Crashers
Then one day Jesus comes to their town. These four men find out about it, and naturally they want to hear this famous rabbi.
One of them says, “We can’t just go ourselves. We’ve got to get our friend there. This could really encourage him. And maybe these things they’re saying about Jesus was true. Maybe Jesus really can heal our friend- wouldn’t that be something! We gotta get him there!”
To do that is going to make things harder logistically, but they’re not thinking about themselves. They are thinking of him. Friends do that. Friends serve each other.
They tell their friend he’s going to see Jesus. They will pick him up at nine o’clock. He doesn’t have much choice, because when his friends pick him up, they really pick him up.
They get to the home where Jesus is teaching, and it is packed. Standing room only, “There was no room left, not even outside the door,” the Bible says.
The men hadn’t counted on this. They had been so excited, and now they’re shut out. They just watch for a while.
Then one of the- the management guy, the one with an MBA- says, “How can we get him to Jesus? Let’s have a brainstorming session, and remember- when brainstorming, there’s no such thing as a dumb idea.”
One of them gets an idea- probably the youngest guy, the tattooed and pierced guy, because he’s an outside-the-box thinker.
“Dudes! What if we make a hole and lower him through the roof! Whoaaa!”
Silence.
“Okay,” asks the MBA, “any other ideas?”
There aren’t any. The hole in the roof is the only thingy they can come up with. They realize its an unorthodox way to get into a room.
But they are desperate to get to Jesus. They had decided they wouldn’t let anything get in their way, so strong is their trust in Jesus, so great their love for their friend.
So the men get some ropes for lowering the mat and head upstairs. It was common in houses to have an outside staircase leading up to the roof, which was often used as a kind of patio. The friends go up and start remodeling this guy’s house.
Imagine this:
Jesus is teaching, and because he is an excellent teacher, people are paying close attention. But suddenly the distraction level begins to rise. There is a strange noise that sounds as if it’s coming through the roof. Dirt and dust and bits of reed begin to descend from the ceiling, getting in people’s eyes and landing in their hair- just a few flakes at first, and then a hail of large chunks of first-century plaster. Eventually all the conversation ceases and Jesus himself stops talking. Everyone is looking up now, and there’s a hole in the ceiling. Four pairs of hands are rooting around, making the hole bigger.
Imagine being the guy who owns the house.
You agree to host a meeting, and suddenly you’re having a spontaneous skylight installed. The owner calls the State Farm agent to see if this is covered.
“Jesus is here- can we call it an act of God?”
These men are devoted to their friend, so they decide a little roofing is not going to stand in their way. They serve him with determination, boldness, and a certain right-brained creativity. They become roof-crashers for their friend. And I have a feeling they will remember the moment for a long time.
Community gets built by servants. Great community gets built by roof-crashers.
Community Requires Trust
Now imagine for a moment that you are the man on the mat. You are about to go through the roof. This is the biggest risk you have ever taken in your life. You wonder if you can trust your friends to keep you safe. After all, when they carry you around at ground level, a drop would be unpleasant but not irredeemable. When you’re on the roof, the stakes get raised a little higher. Has anybody tested the ropes?
You wonder if you can trust the crowd to be civil. After all, they arrived early enough to get seats. Many of them have their own list of requests. You think this may be viewed as a form of butting ahead of other people in line. If things get physical, you have no protection.
You wonder if you can trust Jesus. What if it turns out he can’t help you after all? Worse yet, what if he’s in the middle of a really important point and doesn’t like to be interrupted?
You lie there on your mat on the roof, thinking about all these dangers. You have a decision to make. If you go through the roof, you could get dropped, you could get ridiculed, you could get rejected. On the other hand, if you don’t go through the roof, it’s certain you will never be healed. This is your one shot at wholeness.
The man nods his head. He decides to roll the dice. He becomes a roof-crasher, too. And nothing will ever be the same.
Authentic Community Always Involves Spiritual Growth
The man’s friends must wonder how Jesus will respond. I know from personal experience that teachers can get a little touchy about being interrupted. You’ll notice Jesus made sure he came to earth before there were beepers and pagers and cell phones (“in the fullness of time” is the biblical phrase for it).
Jesus looks up and sees the faces of four friends staring down at him.
They have nothing to ask for themselves. Their only thought is, “If we can just get our friend close to Jesus...”
That’s what great friends do for each other.
Then the text says an amazing thing: “When Jesus saw their faith...”
Usually healing stories speak of Jesus seeing the faith of the one asking for healing for themselves or their child. Here it’s the faith, not primarily of the man, but of his friends.
Do you have any idea what the faith of one person can do for a friend?
They dug a hole through a roof and sent in their friend. There is no record of their saying anything. Its not what he heard that moved Jesus; we are told that he saw their faith. What did he see?
A big hole in the ceiling, four faces in it- sweaty, dusty, anxious, hopeful faces thinking only of their friend and trusting somehow that Jesus has the kind of heart that will respond. Jesus sees a group who posses and act on an irrational commitment to the well-being of one of its members.
Jesus sees a little of what God intended when he made human beings. He sees a little island of shalom in a sea of brokenness. He sees people who love even in the face of a giant “as-is” tag. He thinks to himself that this is humanity at its finest.
He sees their faith.
Jesus turns and looks down at this twisted, motionless body on a mat. He sees not only a broken body but- as in every one of us- a broken, fallen soul.
He speaks tenderly: “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
I wonder what the man on the mat thinks at that point. He hadn’t really signed up to have his sins talked about.
But it’s one of the things that happen when you get neck deep into community and Jesus is there in the middle of it. Being in community has a way of surfacing the sin issue.
Jesus is filling the desire of this man’s friends, perhaps even deeper than they realize. When someone is your friend, your greatest desire for them- deeper than external well-being or even physical health- is that things are right between them and God. If someone is truly my friend, their deepest concern is the well-being of my character, my soul.
This man- who has been mocked and judged by people who assumed that his damaged body indicated that he was spiritually inferior- this man is told by Jesus, “You’re clean. You’re forgiven. You are right with God.”
A key part of this story is that there are others present in the room- teachers of the law, people who were thought of (and thought of themselves) as spiritual giants. They apparently arrived on time and got good seats. But you will notice that they had no friends to bring to Jesus. They were supposed to be the spiritual ones- but apparently no one they knew was hurting or confused or needed Jesus.
The “Unity of Spiritual Orientation”
Jesus is concerned for his critics. He loves them, just as he loves the men coming through the ceiling. So he acts as if to say, “Just so you know see I have authority...” He turns to the man on the mat: “Get up, take your mat, go home.”
Silence. Everyone watches.
The man stands up. He lifts his mat off the ground. He folds it up. He has spent his whole life on that thing. And suddenly- never again.
His world has enlarged from three by six to as far as his feet can carry him.
Not just his body has been healed. His heart has also. His soul. Every sin has been forgiven.
Physically, relationally, spiritually, he is the healthiest guy in the room.
Imagine when he becomes an old man and hits eighty. The other members of his small group are using walkers and canes. His legs are still running strong. He got a nice warranty.
One by one the man’s friends begin to pass away. Ever time he looks at that mat, he remembers the little community he was part of, that crashed through a roof for him. His greatest gift, humanly speaking, wasn’t his legs. It was his friends. There’s no gift like the gift of community.
It is the place where healing and wholeness happens. It is the fellowship where Jesus shows up: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
Excerpts from Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them, John Ortberg
One of the great stories in the Bible about community involves a paralyzed man and the friends who brought him to Jesus.
His whole life is lived out on a mat three feet wide and six feet long. Someone has to feed him, carry him, clothe him, move him to keep him from being covered with bedsores, clean him when he soils himself. He will never know the sense of independence we price so fiercely.
He has no money, no job, no influence, no family, and seemingly not much of a future. His “as-is” tag is three feet wide and six feet long.
What’s he got going for them? He has friends. He has amazing friends.
He’s in one of the killer small groups of all time.
Everybody Has a Mat
Think about what the paralyzed man goes through in order to be friends with this group of men.
He must have wrestled with his sense of independence sometimes. I suspect at times he became jealous of their independence, since after they had been together, everyone could walk home but him. Sometimes he must have wished in the secret places of his heart that he could trade places with one of them. He must have struggled with how they saw him in his neediness.
It is a very vulnerable thing to have someone carry your mat. When somebody’s carrying your mat, they see you in your weakness. They might hurt you if they drop you.
A Community of Roof-Crashers
Then one day Jesus comes to their town. These four men find out about it, and naturally they want to hear this famous rabbi.
One of them says, “We can’t just go ourselves. We’ve got to get our friend there. This could really encourage him. And maybe these things they’re saying about Jesus was true. Maybe Jesus really can heal our friend- wouldn’t that be something! We gotta get him there!”
To do that is going to make things harder logistically, but they’re not thinking about themselves. They are thinking of him. Friends do that. Friends serve each other.
They tell their friend he’s going to see Jesus. They will pick him up at nine o’clock. He doesn’t have much choice, because when his friends pick him up, they really pick him up.
They get to the home where Jesus is teaching, and it is packed. Standing room only, “There was no room left, not even outside the door,” the Bible says.
The men hadn’t counted on this. They had been so excited, and now they’re shut out. They just watch for a while.
Then one of the- the management guy, the one with an MBA- says, “How can we get him to Jesus? Let’s have a brainstorming session, and remember- when brainstorming, there’s no such thing as a dumb idea.”
One of them gets an idea- probably the youngest guy, the tattooed and pierced guy, because he’s an outside-the-box thinker.
“Dudes! What if we make a hole and lower him through the roof! Whoaaa!”
Silence.
“Okay,” asks the MBA, “any other ideas?”
There aren’t any. The hole in the roof is the only thingy they can come up with. They realize its an unorthodox way to get into a room.
But they are desperate to get to Jesus. They had decided they wouldn’t let anything get in their way, so strong is their trust in Jesus, so great their love for their friend.
So the men get some ropes for lowering the mat and head upstairs. It was common in houses to have an outside staircase leading up to the roof, which was often used as a kind of patio. The friends go up and start remodeling this guy’s house.
Imagine this:
Jesus is teaching, and because he is an excellent teacher, people are paying close attention. But suddenly the distraction level begins to rise. There is a strange noise that sounds as if it’s coming through the roof. Dirt and dust and bits of reed begin to descend from the ceiling, getting in people’s eyes and landing in their hair- just a few flakes at first, and then a hail of large chunks of first-century plaster. Eventually all the conversation ceases and Jesus himself stops talking. Everyone is looking up now, and there’s a hole in the ceiling. Four pairs of hands are rooting around, making the hole bigger.
Imagine being the guy who owns the house.
You agree to host a meeting, and suddenly you’re having a spontaneous skylight installed. The owner calls the State Farm agent to see if this is covered.
“Jesus is here- can we call it an act of God?”
These men are devoted to their friend, so they decide a little roofing is not going to stand in their way. They serve him with determination, boldness, and a certain right-brained creativity. They become roof-crashers for their friend. And I have a feeling they will remember the moment for a long time.
Community gets built by servants. Great community gets built by roof-crashers.
Community Requires Trust
Now imagine for a moment that you are the man on the mat. You are about to go through the roof. This is the biggest risk you have ever taken in your life. You wonder if you can trust your friends to keep you safe. After all, when they carry you around at ground level, a drop would be unpleasant but not irredeemable. When you’re on the roof, the stakes get raised a little higher. Has anybody tested the ropes?
You wonder if you can trust the crowd to be civil. After all, they arrived early enough to get seats. Many of them have their own list of requests. You think this may be viewed as a form of butting ahead of other people in line. If things get physical, you have no protection.
You wonder if you can trust Jesus. What if it turns out he can’t help you after all? Worse yet, what if he’s in the middle of a really important point and doesn’t like to be interrupted?
You lie there on your mat on the roof, thinking about all these dangers. You have a decision to make. If you go through the roof, you could get dropped, you could get ridiculed, you could get rejected. On the other hand, if you don’t go through the roof, it’s certain you will never be healed. This is your one shot at wholeness.
The man nods his head. He decides to roll the dice. He becomes a roof-crasher, too. And nothing will ever be the same.
Authentic Community Always Involves Spiritual Growth
The man’s friends must wonder how Jesus will respond. I know from personal experience that teachers can get a little touchy about being interrupted. You’ll notice Jesus made sure he came to earth before there were beepers and pagers and cell phones (“in the fullness of time” is the biblical phrase for it).
Jesus looks up and sees the faces of four friends staring down at him.
They have nothing to ask for themselves. Their only thought is, “If we can just get our friend close to Jesus...”
That’s what great friends do for each other.
Then the text says an amazing thing: “When Jesus saw their faith...”
Usually healing stories speak of Jesus seeing the faith of the one asking for healing for themselves or their child. Here it’s the faith, not primarily of the man, but of his friends.
Do you have any idea what the faith of one person can do for a friend?
They dug a hole through a roof and sent in their friend. There is no record of their saying anything. Its not what he heard that moved Jesus; we are told that he saw their faith. What did he see?
A big hole in the ceiling, four faces in it- sweaty, dusty, anxious, hopeful faces thinking only of their friend and trusting somehow that Jesus has the kind of heart that will respond. Jesus sees a group who posses and act on an irrational commitment to the well-being of one of its members.
Jesus sees a little of what God intended when he made human beings. He sees a little island of shalom in a sea of brokenness. He sees people who love even in the face of a giant “as-is” tag. He thinks to himself that this is humanity at its finest.
He sees their faith.
Jesus turns and looks down at this twisted, motionless body on a mat. He sees not only a broken body but- as in every one of us- a broken, fallen soul.
He speaks tenderly: “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
I wonder what the man on the mat thinks at that point. He hadn’t really signed up to have his sins talked about.
But it’s one of the things that happen when you get neck deep into community and Jesus is there in the middle of it. Being in community has a way of surfacing the sin issue.
Jesus is filling the desire of this man’s friends, perhaps even deeper than they realize. When someone is your friend, your greatest desire for them- deeper than external well-being or even physical health- is that things are right between them and God. If someone is truly my friend, their deepest concern is the well-being of my character, my soul.
This man- who has been mocked and judged by people who assumed that his damaged body indicated that he was spiritually inferior- this man is told by Jesus, “You’re clean. You’re forgiven. You are right with God.”
A key part of this story is that there are others present in the room- teachers of the law, people who were thought of (and thought of themselves) as spiritual giants. They apparently arrived on time and got good seats. But you will notice that they had no friends to bring to Jesus. They were supposed to be the spiritual ones- but apparently no one they knew was hurting or confused or needed Jesus.
The “Unity of Spiritual Orientation”
Jesus is concerned for his critics. He loves them, just as he loves the men coming through the ceiling. So he acts as if to say, “Just so you know see I have authority...” He turns to the man on the mat: “Get up, take your mat, go home.”
Silence. Everyone watches.
The man stands up. He lifts his mat off the ground. He folds it up. He has spent his whole life on that thing. And suddenly- never again.
His world has enlarged from three by six to as far as his feet can carry him.
Not just his body has been healed. His heart has also. His soul. Every sin has been forgiven.
Physically, relationally, spiritually, he is the healthiest guy in the room.
Imagine when he becomes an old man and hits eighty. The other members of his small group are using walkers and canes. His legs are still running strong. He got a nice warranty.
One by one the man’s friends begin to pass away. Ever time he looks at that mat, he remembers the little community he was part of, that crashed through a roof for him. His greatest gift, humanly speaking, wasn’t his legs. It was his friends. There’s no gift like the gift of community.
It is the place where healing and wholeness happens. It is the fellowship where Jesus shows up: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
вторник, февраля 01, 2005
Time
Time seems to fly alot faster as we get older. I remember when an hour used to be a really long time- especially when it was spent practicing scales on the piano. Its fascinating how we all experience that dimension of time (we age together) as humanity, yet that the rate we experience it, doesn't quite seem all that uniform. And no, it isn't uniform, as dear Einstein showed. It can be relative- experienced time depends on the physical velocity experienced. What a bother.
As the only [mathematical-physical] dimension that only runs forwards and doesn't run backwards, we are all locked into it. We are forced to trudge onwards, heedless, merciless, heartless. It does not wait. No, we cannot stop.
I guess when we're young, an hour seems relatively longer because we've experienced less time. Imagine- for a 2hr old baby, its last hour was half its lifetime! What's an hour's wait when you're ninety?
It's odd. I used to be able to do alot more in an hour than I realize doing now. I could have two lessons in school, watch two sit-coms happily. An hour would have made excellent workout on the ivories- my daily grind. A ten minute nap would have been enough. Weeks used to be long, fully lived-out experiences, every turn of the wheel, every creak and click fully conscious. It seemed so full.
Time seems more crowded out as we get older- more things to do, less time there is. Where has it gone? So many little foxes gnawing at the vines. Weeks seem to cycle a tad fast. So much we have done, but how much more is enough?
What? Its February already? Whatever happened to 2004? Where did it go?
The grains continue to run. Our enzymatic processes continue burning. We age. The coiled spring slowly unwinds. Thoughts mature, our character begins to show. Slowly, without warning, we realize we can't do quite the things we used to do. I can no longer play Chopin, nor Bach, nor Mozart. I can, however, hear great stuff in my head, understand how the music works. Maybe that's better? Not having to play it out. Only listening to your mind play it out.
So many things, so little time. So many relationships and disciplines to mind, so many unchecked.
Time becomes experienced as experience, no longer for what it is- the present compared to the past, the future compared to the present. Where am I, where did I come from, where am I going.
Existence becomes Being, instead of Doing.
What will last when time finally runs its course? When we finally reach the end of our course? Where will we be, what will we be doing? Time as a dimension ceases to exist when we meet with our Creator, who holds time, a creation, merely within his palms. Only Him, who exists beyond the boundaries of time, will know our paths, at each decision, at each fork in the road. He knows our beginning, he knows how we end. He knows the very paths we take. When we think of that which is beyond time, there is only our Creator. Oddly, he's waiting for us there, yet very present at each passing moment.
Before we were, He is. Wonderful, isn't it?
Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12
Time seems to fly alot faster as we get older. I remember when an hour used to be a really long time- especially when it was spent practicing scales on the piano. Its fascinating how we all experience that dimension of time (we age together) as humanity, yet that the rate we experience it, doesn't quite seem all that uniform. And no, it isn't uniform, as dear Einstein showed. It can be relative- experienced time depends on the physical velocity experienced. What a bother.
As the only [mathematical-physical] dimension that only runs forwards and doesn't run backwards, we are all locked into it. We are forced to trudge onwards, heedless, merciless, heartless. It does not wait. No, we cannot stop.
I guess when we're young, an hour seems relatively longer because we've experienced less time. Imagine- for a 2hr old baby, its last hour was half its lifetime! What's an hour's wait when you're ninety?
It's odd. I used to be able to do alot more in an hour than I realize doing now. I could have two lessons in school, watch two sit-coms happily. An hour would have made excellent workout on the ivories- my daily grind. A ten minute nap would have been enough. Weeks used to be long, fully lived-out experiences, every turn of the wheel, every creak and click fully conscious. It seemed so full.
Time seems more crowded out as we get older- more things to do, less time there is. Where has it gone? So many little foxes gnawing at the vines. Weeks seem to cycle a tad fast. So much we have done, but how much more is enough?
What? Its February already? Whatever happened to 2004? Where did it go?
The grains continue to run. Our enzymatic processes continue burning. We age. The coiled spring slowly unwinds. Thoughts mature, our character begins to show. Slowly, without warning, we realize we can't do quite the things we used to do. I can no longer play Chopin, nor Bach, nor Mozart. I can, however, hear great stuff in my head, understand how the music works. Maybe that's better? Not having to play it out. Only listening to your mind play it out.
So many things, so little time. So many relationships and disciplines to mind, so many unchecked.
Time becomes experienced as experience, no longer for what it is- the present compared to the past, the future compared to the present. Where am I, where did I come from, where am I going.
Existence becomes Being, instead of Doing.
What will last when time finally runs its course? When we finally reach the end of our course? Where will we be, what will we be doing? Time as a dimension ceases to exist when we meet with our Creator, who holds time, a creation, merely within his palms. Only Him, who exists beyond the boundaries of time, will know our paths, at each decision, at each fork in the road. He knows our beginning, he knows how we end. He knows the very paths we take. When we think of that which is beyond time, there is only our Creator. Oddly, he's waiting for us there, yet very present at each passing moment.
Before we were, He is. Wonderful, isn't it?
Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12
