Mom-- happy Mother's Day. Here are thoughts, worth sharing with your children, too!
Sooner or later, as we age, we discover that nothin's perfect. Nothin', nowhere! In our youth we think that nine or ten particularly irritating things aren't perfect--but the older we get, the closer we come to accepting that EVERYTHING is just a little bit "off"...absolutely nothin' gels correctly in our existence.
The weather isn't perfect, our home's location isn't perfect, our spouses aren't perfect, our children aren't perfect, 1,000's of things aren't perfect. But it gets worse: the lid on the jar doesn't come off perfectly so it ALWAYS spills, my hip size isn't perfect, the taste of the soup isn't just right, the design of the bathroom gives us fits, the car rattles, the grocery store has a congested entrance, the sermon is too long, the neighbors are too loud, my fingernails always break, the goats chew up everything, the sun is too bright.
Because of the moral fall in the Garden of Eden, everything got slightly skewered. It was a perfect judgement, designed by God to throw everything off balance. Interpersonal communication got fried. The whole earth got out of joint, off balance. Everything got skewered slightly to the left, or up, or down, or to the right, or into "strange-ville," or twisted or doesn't fit, or squeaks, or feels like "warp-i-a" , or, or...As we aged, we found out, in spades, that this isn't heaven.
But all of this realization isn't the last word on human existence. Some have discovered, more slowly in the midst of this bizarre daily disjointed experience of nothing working QUITE right, that there IS a heaven to be found, right here and now. A piece of heaven. An earlier heaven.
Believers in severe extremity have found it. Believers in solitary confinement have found it. Martyrs have found it. Ordinary believers CAN find it...where? In the cathedral of their own private mind. It is a miracle on demand. When we commune with God we are instantly in an earlier heaven. There, in prayer, we experience perfect love, perfect emotional sustenance, perfect gentlemanly discourse.
In addition, we are promised, yet in the future, that there will be a recalibration of the whole physical earth, and a return to ease in all relational dynamics/ communication. We are promised a new earth--one without a moral fall. The new earth will torque reality back to normal. It will be amazing. So for now: the earlier we square ourselves with the fact that this isn't heaven, the happier we will be. With humans, adapt, adapt, adapt. With God bask, bask, bask in His eternal goodness. At some future day, everything will be perfect everywhere!
