Beyond the tree, the stars began to prick holes in the smooth blue dome which stretched above and around me, and it felt to me then as it had so many other nights before--like I was resting in the cupped hand of God.
I had been taught about Him from birth, and I knew Him as my Father. And so I stood with my whole life stretched before me--secure in the love of my family, at rest in the peace of the twilit farm--and I was overwhelmed with praise for the goodness of this Great God and Father of my heart, whose face I had never seen, but who had written Himself into the fabric of my life so inextricably that I saw His fingerprints in the beauties all around me.
Back then, I had the habit of speaking aloud my childish delight in His marvelous creativity whenever I chanced upon it. I spoke to Him that evening--sang actually--from the fullness of my little heart, and I felt His answering affection spring up inside me.
But something different happened that night.
As I sang, for the first time in my life my childish joy was pierced with a nameless and almost palpable grief. It spread over me like a shadow or a chill, and suddenly the coming of the darkness, although still beautiful and serene, seemed not as much the birth of an evening as it did the death of a day.
My song caught in my throat, and I stood and looked as far as I could--over my father's fields, past the jagged rows of trees which rimmed them, all the way to where the distant edges of our county broke into gentle hills against the sky--and felt the tug of something which was at the same time both invisible and irresistible.
It felt like a relentless force was pulling me beyond my sight into a vast and mysterious future, and I sensed that the urgent transcendence of this moment and the loveliness opening within it, were at the same time passing away and being replaced by...
...what?
I didn't know. And it made me afraid.
I suddenly saw that Life would only ever travel in the direction away from the bright wonders that daily broke upon me with such compelling freshness, and for the first time my spirit rebelled against the death of these small beauties and the absolute futility of trying to hold them still and safe.
And just maybe I caught a foreshadowing of the end of me--that incomprehensible certainty that one day I too would vanish like a sunset or a pretty wave on the beach.
Whatever the cause, that night I lost my childish ability to completely revel in the wonderment of a perfect moment without simultaneously grieving its loss, so that the loveliness of the sky and the warmth of the air were infused with a sadness which sent me running from the mysterious twilight to the safe and familiar distractions of my home and family.
I don't mean to imply that from that day forward, I was not able to completely fully enjoy a moment while I was in it. I have had a life so far marked by more joys than sorrows, and I am grateful for it. I still sometimes stand under the stars and feel the pleasure of being the child of a Great God in a vast and glorious universe, but I do not think any of us can be completely happy here, nor do I think we are supposed to be.
You see, we were not made for endings, and try as we might, down here we cannot escape them.
We were made for the garden, for eternity, for unbroken fellowship, for walking with unveiled faces with God and with each other. (Genesis 2:7-15)
When that was destroyed by the corruption of sin, we were able to hold onto the shadows of the life we were made for, but not the substance. (Genesis 3:16-24)
From that day, we grasped the pieces of what we were to have had, but not the perfection, and we became in many ways the most pitiable of creatures: blind to our own deformities, eaten up by our own passions, unsatisfied by our gluttonous consumption, and imprisoned by our futile search for meaning and purpose and fulfillment in our confused, one-dimensional, materialist philosophies of life. (Romans 1:18-32)
With all our science and psychology, we have not been able to explain why we are the only creatures who are routinely tortured by the "wrongness" of what we see around us.
Other species seems to be accepting of "what is", but not us.
Look around you. How many animals inebriate themselves on drugs and alcohol to escape the perceived horrors of reality?
How many are incapacitated by fear, anger, depression, and anxiety?
How many choose self-mutilation or even self-extermination due to the unbearable weight of their own thoughts?
I think the metaphysical reality of eternity rings in our hearts and demands an answer, and when we refuse to look for one, we doom ourselves to walk in an increasingly jarring landscape of grinding gears and slipping cogs.
And here is what I also think: God designed it to be that way.
He uses the internal struggle between the finite world and our eternal souls to drive us more fully and eagerly to Himself, to pry our fingers off a dying earth, and to lift our eyes toward our true home in heaven. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Because we are not living the lives we were created to inhabit as image bearers of the holy and eternal God, and only He can fix it. (Romans 5:8)
I believe that God, in His mercy, sent the shadow into my childhood song as the first, gentle warning that despite my contentment here, all was not right.
When you are young, the small griefs, small deaths (of perfect days, seasons, years, stages, moments with friends, passing accolades in academics and sports) are muted by the seemingly endless parade of beginnings (new skills, new teachers, new privileges, new friendships, new knowledge, young love, first jobs, new babies, new houses, fresh opportunities) which follow close upon one another--and the apparent distance of the ultimate end of oneself.
But then one day you wake up and the strength and vigor which once masked your mortality is replaced by visible lines on your face, gray in your hair, and weariness in your bones.
The children who once revolved around you like bright planets around a burning sun are creating new orbits which leave you sometimes feeling like a distant moon in a strange sky.
The career which defined you is not the ultimate fulfillment you imagined it would be, and your company's relentless hiring of 12 year olds who are smarter, fresher, more innovative, and more tech savvy than you are reminds you daily of your looming obsolescence.
The parents and mentors on whom you relied for wisdom and advice and comfort are growing older and weaker, and maybe aren't there at all anymore.
And your mind finally blinks awake to the truth that has been lurking around the edges for as long as you have been alive--the truth that broke over me on that quiet night so many years ago as a happy child on a peaceful farm:
That life is a story of perpetual loss in an ever-expanding corridor of endings.
That no good thing on earth lasts.
Children grow up. Friends move away. Love fades. People change. Jobs end. Spouses die. Things break. Strength fails. Buildings crumble. Nations fall. Whole civilizations melt into history, and our hearts scream, "No! Not yet. Not now. Not me."
And often that truth is so enormous and incomprehensible that we burrow hard into what we know. Distraction. Denial. Despair.
My impulse so many years ago was to run from the fields when the shadows fall, and too often it still is.
I get scared and I run from the song I was singing.
Run from the close, cupping hand of God.
Run from the hard truths of intimate communion with a Holy God to the bright, busy distractions of earth.
I am not alone. We humans are almost universal in our gluttonous appetites for too much of a good thing. We order our lives around the new and the novel, the safe and the comfortable. We gorge on entertainment and busyness and we nurture our frantic obsession for belonging.
But eventually, even our gilded cages cannot keep out the sound of closing doors and what then? Denial? Despair?
Yes. Just look at us.
The old often embrace denial, cutting and recreating their faces and bodies into caricatures of youth and shaking a fist at the physical, financial, and logistical limitations that come with age.
The young do it by throwing off responsibility, maturity--even biology--in a vain attempt to wrest the power of definition from the hand of an omnipotent God.
All of us play at this grotesque game of dress-up to some degree, pretending that reality is not what is, but rather what we want it to be.
And when our sad little games fail, too often we choose despair. We drown our sorrows, numb our pain--or worse, gorge ourselves on pain until it defines us, thinking that since life hurts, we will make it hurt on our terms. Sometimes we even make it end on our terms.
And still, still, still, this is simply us running from a loving, merciful, truthful God.
A God who is only closing doors so that we will not ultimately be satisfied with broken things in an alien land.
A God who gives us good gifts down here to whet our appetites for the divine, but is kind enough to show us the dangerous, painful, shattered places underneath so that we might try find our way back to the garden, and back to Him. (Matthew 7:11, John 3:16)
I want to grow strong enough in my faith that I can stand in the field and watch the day die and the shadows fall and still sing from a full heart.
I want to be unable to see beyond a horizon in any direction and still rejoice in the small wonders around my feet and the brilliant mysteries over my head.
I want to feel a chill in the air and instead of running away, lift my face to the tender gaze of my Heavenly Father, who made me and loves me and is willing to break open my pale and narrow ideas of beauty and comfort and peace in order to one day restore to me what is beyond my imagination. (Philippians 3:17-20)
I want to be fearless at the dying of the light because it means the end of all endings. (2 Corinthians 5:6-8)
Once upon a time I had a dream, or maybe it was a vision. I was walking on a winding path in a little green wood. A woman was walking ahead of me, and I could only see her from behind. She was human, like me, but I cannot describe the beauty of her form or the grace and joy with which she walked.
It was as if she had fallen from the fingers of God, and I felt pale and shabby and worn out by comparison--and utterly embarrassed to be in the presence of something as wonderful as she.
I wanted to run off the path and hide, lest she see me in my dilapidated state, but then she turned and looked at me over her shoulder.
And shined a smile from her eyes and lips that left me breathless with wonder.
I knew it was my Grammi--not the Grammi who at that time was still alive next door, ticking off painful days in wizened body with a clouded mind--but Grammi as she would be when she finally came to the end of all endings, made perfect and going home.
I don't know how I knew it was her, because she was incomprehensibly wonderful in her other-worldliness, but I knew.
And I was just behind her, walking the same trail toward the same good end.
From that time on, though this sounds odd, if it were not for the grief of the ones left behind, I would in some ways prefer a funeral to a wedding.
I feel like I was given a tiny window into the real "happily ever after" and now, nothing else will do.
As lovely as a wedding is with all its wide-eyed innocence and the hopeful dreams of youth, my heart grieves for the all the ways in which the two dreamers will one by one have to put to death their visions of how this union will bring about their ultimate fulfillment.
Of course, in the process their relationship will mature from the heady emotional attraction which brought them to the altar, into the profoundly deep, self-sacrificial, and satisfying love which paints such a vivid picture of Christ and His church. This is very good!
But how much better for the one who has come to the end of all endings--the one who has stepped out of his apparent finitude into the perfected fullness of eternal life. Psalm 16:11
*********************
To the dear ones in my life facing endings of various kinds right now, please know this:
You are still before the face of God.
In His hand. Under His care.
He is still the God of truth, of beauty, of wonder.
He is the God of a love so great it drove Him from heaven to a bloody cross.
For You.
To an ending so enormous that it brought about the death of death, and the end of all endings for His little children.
For Us.
And He is speaking that Love to you in His word and in His world.
And if you let Him, He will lead you home.
"So Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him."
Hebrews 9:28
"But as Scripture says, 'No eye has seen,
no ear has heard
and no mind has imagined
the things that God has prepared for those who love him'."
1 Corinthians 2:9
