The sky is gray again. There's some sort of snow/sleet mix coming down, and the roads are slushy. Just the kind of weather that makes you want to curl up in bed and wake up another day or in another place. And I ask myself, "Why do we live in Indiana?" I just read through the I Corinthians 13 passage from the Message again and I am reminded that no matter how clear it is, we can only see a short distance because there is this fog, or this inability to know completeness in the here and now. The fog will not completely lift until we see Jesus again.
I Cor. 13: 12
We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
So, today although the gray pulls me down and makes me tired, I am holding on to hope. And through the Spirit's help, I will love well.
I never understood hope. For years I was consumed with happiness in material and trivial things. I loved God. Fell in love with Jesus, but I didn't get hope and heavenly thinking. When Bret was diagnosed with MS, hope made sense. If this was what life dished out, I had to change the lens I was using, the one through which I looked at my circumstances. I finally understood what people were talking about when they said they longed for heaven.
Before the MS, I liked my life and I didn't want to think about heaven, even if it was supposed to be all white lights warming your soul, lovey lovey, and singing lalala all the time. But when you realize that life doesn't always serve that steak you ordered, you grab onto the hope that only our Saviour offers. The only comfort that truly works.
So even though the skies are gray and it feels like the clouds are spitting down on me, I am looking through life through a much clearer lens. I am so thankful that God saves me from my Eeyore-like thinking. Instead, I'm like little Piglet, pink and maybe somewhat naive... and hopeful, waiting out the winter until spring comes and I am awakened to colors and smells that have been dormant for so long.
Today I find color in those around me: my friend who gave me a novel that she loved and wanted to share with me, my friend who is taking two days to spend here with our family while I have surgery, my friends who are in prayer for me and who take the risk of speaking truth even when I don't want to hear it, my husband who pursues me even when I am unlovable, my children who reach out their hands and wrap them around my neck, my parents who are enjoying life in the sunshine with their friends in Florida. These are the richest colors I could ever witness.
In fact, at the Children's Museum, there is a huge blown glass piece of art that rises from the bottom floor to the top floor. It has thousands of twisting, twirling colorful glass pieces that intertwine and wrap around each other. It's callled "Fireworks." One day my son asked me what I would call it if I had named it. I told him I would name it, "Lynn's Brain" because my imagination must look like that - full of color, twisted, sort of confused but fun. Now I wonder if it might be better named, "Those I Love," because it's so beautiful and the pieces are all one of a kind. Yet they make up an incredible display when pieced together. Hmmm, just a random thought.
If you need some color, maybe you should venture down to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis to wake up your senses. While you're there, you can go to the bottom floor and lay on a rotating sofa where you stare peacefully at the bottom of the "Fireworks" piece. Maybe the fog will lift ever so slighty and reveal a little more of God's world, the way he intended it to be.