The Lady asked me the other day, “Mommy, who took care of us when you and Daddy were little?”
I smiled, and laughed a little and tried to explain that there was a time in which she wasn’t alive. She can’t imagine that she was just a dream in God’s heart when I was young. As far as she know, she always has just been.
A few days later, Boy 1 and I were talking American history. I explained to him that the US has only been a nation for a couple hundred years.
“That just doesn’t seem possible,” he said. “It seems like it’s been here forever, or at least a thousand years!”
We all struggle to understand the passing of time, the seasons of life.
This week has been hard for me and lots of people around me. We have faced a sad loss as we reconcile the loss of our friends’ baby, Gibson.
It’s hard to imagine he no longer belongs here with his mama and daddy, but instead God has called him to the life beyond this one.
And so we ache, but no longer for Gibson, because we know he is healed at last, free of pain, free from relying on a doctor’s wisdom, medicine, and machines to sustain his life.
We ache for ourselves, for a world that is fragile and broken, held together by a sacred silver string of God’s providence.
But we still can’t really understand what this means, how what seems inconceivable in this life fits into that seemingly far away place of eternity.
It’s hard to tell how all the puzzle pieces fit together when you’ve only briefly glimpsed the picture on the box.
Life and its weight are suddenly a bit heavier this week. The life of faith and the hope of heaven become a treasure we hold deep within us. To be faithful to Him who has called us to live true to His goodness, even in difficult times, we hold onto words such as these:
Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. -1 Corinthians 15:58
We do not stand in vain. We do not hope and trust in vain. The eternal, unchanging God has woven some sorrow into these days of ours. But one day all sorrow will cease, all pain will vanish.
One day we will rest with Him for all eternity. The pieces will all make sense and everything will be different.
But for today I am filling my soul with the thought that how we stand matters, how we mourn matters, and I am feasting on this poem by Longfellow:
A PSALM OF LIFE
WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife !
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead !
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
