He is probably someone’s grandpa. He sits at a nearby table in our favorite restaurant on San Juan Island, a U.S. Navy cap firmly in place on his head. His plate of fish and chips waits for him. I would guess that he is hovering somewhere in his early 80’s. His washed-out blue eyes are clouded over, drifting off in faraway directions as he makes halfhearted efforts to connect with the chatter between his daughter and son-in- law. His head turns listlessly from one to the other as they speak. His daughter touches his shoulder and invites him into the conversation, but he’s wandering in another country. One way or another, we are all going there.
Earlier that morning when we boarded the ferry to San Juan Island, the light on the water mesmerized me. Myriad pinpoints of morning light danced off the tiny mirrors on the tip of each wave. Light fell like raindrops into the water, then sprang up in a shower of diamonds. The beauty of the light pierced me and filled my eyes until tears ran down my face.
I am in love with this dance of water and light but I don’t get to keep it. It is ever changing as time/space races me along, holding me back from it. I can’t absorb it. I can’t enter it. It slices through me in short bursts and leaves me longing for more.
How powerfully I feel the difference between the temporal and the eternal. We are poised on the edge of space/time, wondering just what waits for us after death. “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them…but the word of our God stands forever.” So penned the prophet Isaiah some 2600 years ago.
Yes, the flowers fall. What is more enthralling than a field of wildflowers? Exuberant poppies blowing crimson in the wind, perky daisies poking their white heads up at will, random cosmos surprising us with bursts of deepest pink and blue. It’s a profusion of color, suspending us in summer’s spell. But it is tinged with heartbreak. It’s not going to last. It will wither and die. Autumn winds will blow and winter’s snowfall will smother it all in a blanket of white.
It is the same with us. Every glance in the mirror is a reminder. My face ages and begins, just begins, to crumple like tissue paper. My hands, veined and thin-skinned now, look not that different from the hands of my 98 year old mother. My metabolism slows and my stamina decreases. Words begin to evade my mind; names escape me. My train of thought drifts off in its own direction and leaves me, mid-sentence, covering for myself with some mumbled inanity. Moments of failing to recall phone numbers and social security numbers unexpectedly catch me off guard and terrify me. I know they are stored in there somewhere, but they stubbornly refuse to come to the surface.
“…the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them…”It is God who breathes on the grass and makes it wither. And strangely enough, it is God who also causes us to wither. “All men are like grass.” Why would He do that?
The apostle Peter helps us out here, for he reminds us of Isaiah’s words in his epistle. He tells us that we are born again, through the living and enduring word of God, into a new and imperishable life. “The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” So we who have believed in Jesus begin to realize that we are gradually being weaned from our earthly life to our eternal life. Here we are, living our lives out on this earth, aware of our own mortality, yet sensing somehow that we are destined for something greater.
Eternity waits on the edge of Time, just a breath away. Who has not felt its pull? That unseen world nudges us at every turn, in the riveting beauty of a bird in flight, the elusive fragrance of a blossom at night, the heap of restless clouds drifting uneasily across the sun. There is more, a depth of existence waiting for us, and it holds us at arm’s length. Time and space restrain us from the fullness of that life. We were not meant to live briefly and crumble into nothingness. We have a destiny beyond this fragile world, beyond our encroaching mortality. We are being prepared for release into the Love of God.
As we age, our lives begin to narrow. Everything that we love on this earth, our careers, possessions, and relationships, even our physical and mental capacity, is up for grabs. If we live far enough into old age, we will gradually lose our grip on these things that define us. We will watch them slip away, one by one. There is no permanence in any of them. Even our bodies will betray us. Ultimately, Death will take it all away from us. We can see it coming. And God has arranged it that way.
God lets us fall in love with these temporal things to draw the love out of us. And then he lets the very things that we love the most wither away. Why? Because there is something else that doesn’t wither. But He can never show it to us first. He has to reveal the beauty of the temporal before He can reveal the eternal. He must first open up that wellspring of desire in us. Only then can He draw us to Himself and the fullness of Joy that waits for us in His presence.
