An Unexpected Journey

We sit behind french doors overlooking the dancing ripples of the Tennessee River.  Orange and red are striking against the deep blue sky.  The leaves sway to the rhythm of glistening water.  Inside the melody drifts from the piano as my sister-n-law’s mother dances her fingers deftly across the ivory keys.  Powerful words pour from her lips and  move like a strong current through the hearts of the listening.  “His arms are fortress for the weak.  Let faith arise… I lift my hands to believe again… You are faithful God forever… Open my eyes…”  Lyrics from a song by Chris Tomlin.  I hold my daddy’s hand as tears stream down his weathered cheeks.  This year has aged us all.  I see it in my own face.  My tears join his.  We have sipped our coffee and listened to my Daddy’s deep voice read to us from Watchman Nee.  Words about eternity.  About finishing strong.  Written by one who died after many years in a Chi...

My little ones are napping and the warm chocolate morsels in my delicate pie melt slowly in my mouth.  I am trying to wrap my mind around  a thought that my mom's friend shared with her and she passed on to me.  The bible says that with the Lord a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day.  Now certain scriptures do indicate that there is some sort of passage of time in heaven, but we don't have any reason to believe that it is necessarily at the same rate there as here.  Clearly, based  scripture what feels long to us here can seem but a day to the Lord and vice versa.  Time is a dimension by which God is not defined.  Rather, he defines it .  One of his names in the bible is the Alpha and Omega, aka The Beginning and The End. Keeping all that in mind.  We don't know if time here correlates with time in heaven or not.  So my mom's friend suggested doing some math.  If one thousand years here is as a day th...

Traffic  slows almost to a halt.  I round the curve on my way to work and see two cars stopped in the road… an accident.  It doesn’t look like anyone is hurt.  But there is a mom on the side of the road clutching her little girl, maybe about 3 years old, and crying on the cell phone.  The girl looks okay.  Then a mile or so past the accident the state trooper screeches by me.  Then the ambulances.   Sirens wailing.  And I join them.   Wailing. It is just too much.  I saw the broken glass in the road.  The mommy.  The sounds.  The cell phone.  The little girl who is okay.  But now I am in that day, and the little girl is not okay.  And the mommy didn’t get to hold her… ever again.  And the ambulances didn’t come just to screen us.  They came to carry her away.   Forever.  I cannot hold it in any longer.  I am losing it.  Control.  It broke down on t...