These Little Boxes

I always choose the window seat.

Every time I fly, during takeoff (or descent), when the altitude tweaks my perspective, and I look down on the residential boxes in the outskirts, I ache.

These little shelters that in many ways form an anchor and an axis for our existence get so minuscule in a matter of minutes as the horizon stretches out.  And I start to wonder…

What have those bricks and shingles seen over the years?  What has passed through those thresholds? What stories have been written?  What tragedies are being lived out? What quiet victories are yet to be seen?

That house right there—when was the last time its walls heard a good, long, shared belly laugh?

That house over there—it shelters the imago dei—living, breathing images of God.  Do they even realize it?

In which of these little boxes did a wife recently tell her husband, “This just isn’t working”?

In which of these little boxes did parents quake in elation at the return of their prodigal son?

In which of these little boxes did a pervert pulverize a girl’s innocence?

In which of these little boxes did a kid hear some lie about who he was, and it took root, and thirty years later he’s still struggling to disbelieve it?

In which of these little boxes does a grandmother greet every morning with weak coffee and a strong hallelujah, a woman whose life has been one heartache after another, yet she has always kept despair at a distance, and she’s maintained her joy and her hallelujah, and because it is pock-marked, windburnt, and grizzled, it is the strongest and sweetest hallelujah imaginable.

At this altitude, I feel the ache of millennia.  Sorrow and sin and humility and faith and pain and love all gathered under the rooftops of suburbia.  And we can wrestle with all of it, with the goodness of God, and the reasons why, and the sovereignty, and all of it, and we should.

But if you squint hard at these little boxes, you can see a thumb—God’s very thumb—as it swipes under the very last tear duct, as it dries the very last tear, as it smears the very last salty streak across the very last cheek.  

Question marks dissolved. Justice perfected. All things put to rights.  You can see all of it, right there with your tray table stowed, right there from seat 27F.

This is why I always choose the window seat.  

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Leaves Instead of Capillaries

I drifted downstream in a canoe on a gorgeous day and leaned over the gunwale, distracted and derelict in my ruddering, to watch the autumn leaves, baptized and fresh out of chlorophyll, as they floated a few inches beneath the hull and matched our pace, steady with the current.

And I couldn’t help but think of this place a mere 157 years back, on the bloodiest day in American history, when legions of blues and grays spent the day snuffing out the breath of their countrymen, and their blood spilled directly from their veins into the veins of the earth, and their capillaries were carried off in this same current, past these same rocks, just like these leaves were being ushered down now.

And the serenity of this place—the crispness of the air, the clarity of the creek, the light that filtered down through the hangers-on in the limbs overhead—belied the horrors that had taken place here.

Or perhaps it gave a glimpse of redemption, of things being made right, of sin carried off in a current.

Leaves instead of capillaries.

And my mind was quickened to the last lines of a Boris Pasternak poem:

“I shall descend into my grave. And on the third day rise again. / And, even as rafts float down a river, / So shall the centuries drift, trailing like a caravan, / Coming for judgement, out of the dark, to me.”

We are every one of us floating thoroughly and inexorably toward the Great Reckoning, the Making Right of All Things, the Perfection of Justice. Every leaf, every capillary, every sin and kindness and cruelty and great feat and selfless sacrifice, every fit of rage and heartbreak and cowardice, and every heart, are all being ushered irresistibly to Christ in the sovereign current of time for the ultimate Reckoning.

Trust in Christ, and you shall drift Home.

A Slow Burn

“Father Abraham” by Joel Schoon-Tanis

Recently I’ve been camping out in the saga of Abraham. It’s a story of getting one-upped. It’s a story of a slow burn.

Here is a man approaching his twilight looking back with a melancholy ache, dripping with fatalistic regret. His deepest longing is to speak toward his thinning future and leave an echo, but he has no offspring to carry on his blood and his legacy. He has much to bequeath, but just a servant to receive it. He is marginal at best, and with no child, the mist of his existence will soon be forgotten.

He just wants a child.

Along comes this God who’s always been there—this God who studies the soul of a man—who hears silent aching—who sees mist. His name is Yahweh, and He finds faith in Abram. For three quarters of a century, Abram has felt like a drought, but Yahweh sees in him a tidal wave. He sees Abram’s simple but profound yearning for a son. Just a son.

And Yahweh one-ups him. Like He always does. He invites him outside and dares him to count. “You want a son, huh?” I can almost hear Him saying. “How ‘bout this instead? How ‘bout kings born from your seed? How ‘bout nations cascading down through the millennia? How ‘bout I exchange your fruitlessness for the eternal flowering of the earth?” No wonder Abram falls on his face. He just got one-upped. Unfathomably one-upped.

And this old man chooses to believe it. In fits and spurts, he clumsily believes the impossible.

And then comes the slow burn.

The best meals—those with the deepest, richest flavor—take a long time and a slow burn, but they’re always worth the wait. The microwave is functional and fine for sustenance, but for food that satisfies and sticks with you and is talked about for years to come, you need a simmer—a good, slow burn.

Perhaps a 25-year simmer. A pause for dramatic effect, during which the window for child-bearing was definitely shut. A good, slow, quarter-century burn. Surely Abraham wondered if dinner would ever be ready—if the whole thing was just a farce—if the count-the-stars thing was a false metaphor dangled before him. But he kept a trajectory of faith. And in Yahweh’s goodness, no fewer than five times during that slow burn, He reiterated the promise that his seed would never end. Abraham hovered around the kitchen with the mesmerizing aroma lingering in his nostrils, wondering if he would ever eat, and five times Yahweh reassured him: “Supper’s almost ready. Believe me—it’s worth the wait.”

Blessed are the children of the slow burn, who protect the seed of promise and resist the tug of disbelief, who keep their eyes faithward, who smell the aroma, who never stop hovering around the kitchen.

For they shall be one-upped.

Words to Ponder ١

The Pleasure of Creation

I’ve lost track how many times I’ve watched this video today.  It is stunning.  Every time I watch it, I imagine that, despite the utter fallenness of our world, God must still look upon His creation with great pleasure, day after day, night after night.  He is still saying, “It is good.”

It’s the deep satisfaction a painter feels when she’s finished a great work, or that a poet feels when he’s turned the right phrase and it all fits together beautifully, or that an accountant feels

How Good and Pleasant

“Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.” (Psalm 133:1)

The colors of this verse have become much more vivid for me since becoming a parent.  As most parents (of boys especially) will tell you, there are days when it seems like you are doing nothing except peeling bickering children off each other, negotiating tenuous peace treaties, and overall trying to lift your beloved offspring out of the cesspool of petty selfishness.

Then there are other days (or at least moments) when your kids are cooperating, showing kindness, being creative together, letting the reverberations of Eden echo off their limbs.  Yesterday, my five-year-old was building a tower

Have You Fed Your Eyes Today?

One hundred seventy-one years ago today, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote this in his journal. It is impossible to overstate how deeply this resonates with me.

If God Were a Librarian

If you asked 100 people, “Why do people go to a library?” you would expect almost all 100 of them to say something like “to check out books”, “to research”, “to read quietly” or something similar.  If someone replied, “The purpose of the library is to make sure everyone’s library fines are paid,” you’d probably think that person was either joking, misinformed, or just plain stupid.  You’d certainly conclude he or she was completely missing the point.

I’m a high school teacher, and recently one of my students went to the school library to return a book that was a month overdue.  She came back wide-eyed and exhilarated and explained that the librarian had waived the fine.  When the student asked why, the librarian replied, “I want people to love reading.  How are people going to love reading when they have to pay money because they took too long to read?  Just try to be on time next time.”

I simultaneously had two lines of thought run through my brain.

Loose Ends

The ends keep coming loose.
New frayed strings pop up
Methodically, around every corner.
I will never tie them all down,
Not with 80-hour days
Or 800 hands.

So I chase my tail relentlessly
Like a dog,
Like a haggard, frazzled pooch
Till I crumble over myself in exhaustion,
Not one inch closer
To catching that tail.

Or just maybe…

Awe is awaiting…