I sometimes hate the linearity of life.
Some days I am irritated that I can only be in one place at a time, and how long it takes to get from one place to another. This usually happens when I'm hungry but the meatloaf still needs 40 minutes to cook, or I'm speeding down Henderson and running late to work. Do you know how much of my day is spent sleeping and eating and cleaning and traveling? When there is much to be done, having to stop for a sandwich or a nap is grumblesome.
The interstices of life are strange, though. They seem to be built for developing relationships. Road trips to vacation destinations are often crazy glue for relationships. Some of my best conversations with Dave happen on the drive to Home Depot...or Lowe's...or Harbor Freight...or Ace Hardware. We share meals with people when we have to stop and replenish. Most of us share our bedroom, our kitchen, and our home with at least one other person.
But sometimes the thought of all that time maintaining our bodies and moving about in this world irritates the hell out of me.
It makes me think about the Israelites.
They wanted a homeland and they wanted a temple. For centuries they were slaves in Egypt. And then after their liberation, they wandered around the Middle Eastern desert. For decades they slept on sand they didn't keep and built temporal tabernacles out of rods and canvas.
Some days I just get sick of building tabernacles. I wake up and I don't want to keep trudging through the desert. I know the tabernacle is just as holy as a temple, and I am thankful for the manna that keeps coming, but I'm ready to feast.
I'm glad that my physical limitations are used to get closer to people. But I'm tired of packing up the canvas when I want to lay down marble cornerstones.
Paul totally got this. He's ready for the temple. "To die is gain," he said. No more wavering tent walls. But he also gets what he can do here, while he's bound by space and time and body. "If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me." He can share his bodily life with people, and, by some grace, he does his work by sharing all the quirks of this physical life.
I'm glad God knows what I'm working with, my limitations and every malfunction and physical barrier. He knows that we have these scraps of spiritual life hidden in a cumbersome mortal physical body - that we are these wraith-like bits of Trueness, of Realness, bottled up in awkward flesh. And somehow, in all the stumbling around, slogging through sand far from a home we've never seen, setting up tents for worship and longing for the temple we were built for, we are getting work done.
I still don't like seeing through the glass darkly, or feeling the sand grit in my teeth, or the awkwardness of being bound by body and space and time...but as long as He's patient and gracious and something good can get done in all this extraneous bulk, I'll try and be satisfied knowing I'll have enough manna to get me to the feast.
Some days I am irritated that I can only be in one place at a time, and how long it takes to get from one place to another. This usually happens when I'm hungry but the meatloaf still needs 40 minutes to cook, or I'm speeding down Henderson and running late to work. Do you know how much of my day is spent sleeping and eating and cleaning and traveling? When there is much to be done, having to stop for a sandwich or a nap is grumblesome.
The interstices of life are strange, though. They seem to be built for developing relationships. Road trips to vacation destinations are often crazy glue for relationships. Some of my best conversations with Dave happen on the drive to Home Depot...or Lowe's...or Harbor Freight...or Ace Hardware. We share meals with people when we have to stop and replenish. Most of us share our bedroom, our kitchen, and our home with at least one other person.
But sometimes the thought of all that time maintaining our bodies and moving about in this world irritates the hell out of me.
It makes me think about the Israelites.
They wanted a homeland and they wanted a temple. For centuries they were slaves in Egypt. And then after their liberation, they wandered around the Middle Eastern desert. For decades they slept on sand they didn't keep and built temporal tabernacles out of rods and canvas.
Some days I just get sick of building tabernacles. I wake up and I don't want to keep trudging through the desert. I know the tabernacle is just as holy as a temple, and I am thankful for the manna that keeps coming, but I'm ready to feast.
I'm glad that my physical limitations are used to get closer to people. But I'm tired of packing up the canvas when I want to lay down marble cornerstones.
Paul totally got this. He's ready for the temple. "To die is gain," he said. No more wavering tent walls. But he also gets what he can do here, while he's bound by space and time and body. "If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me." He can share his bodily life with people, and, by some grace, he does his work by sharing all the quirks of this physical life.
I'm glad God knows what I'm working with, my limitations and every malfunction and physical barrier. He knows that we have these scraps of spiritual life hidden in a cumbersome mortal physical body - that we are these wraith-like bits of Trueness, of Realness, bottled up in awkward flesh. And somehow, in all the stumbling around, slogging through sand far from a home we've never seen, setting up tents for worship and longing for the temple we were built for, we are getting work done.
I still don't like seeing through the glass darkly, or feeling the sand grit in my teeth, or the awkwardness of being bound by body and space and time...but as long as He's patient and gracious and something good can get done in all this extraneous bulk, I'll try and be satisfied knowing I'll have enough manna to get me to the feast.
Comments