Thursday, December 18, 2008

In the Land of the Living

"I believe I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."
Ps. 27

Though I am the Queen of Complainers, I suspect that paradoxically, we can experience God here, in our incompleteness, damage, ongoing struggle to repent, our fragmentedness, our blurriness-of-sight, in ways that are unique to life in time and in these bodies--ways that are precious and unrepeatable--yes, it will all be glorious in the fullness of the eternal kingdom, but this time here/now is so significant that I've heard someone speculate that saints in heaven will be nostalgic for their trials on earth. There are qualities of intimacy with the Holy Spirit and with each other that can be experienced only in this life, only through the process of God's dealing with us here as our healer, physician, transforming designer, etc. from the inside-out and the outside-in, in the context of ambiguous and often frustrating dailiness. There is a communion with God that occurs in the secret places deep beneath the "radar" of our conscious awareness especially when it may seem to us as though nothing much is going on. Glory to God in everything!

1 comment:

kkollwitz said...

Yes. The endless frustrations and failures of living in a sin-wracked world should point us more and more toward God.