Next [The Open Mic]

Life in the Slow Lane

There is a place I love to walk. Not run, not jog, not stroll. Walk. Earbuds bringing song to my soul. Lake down the hill sparkling like water on the moon. I call it the place of endless thought. Up on that hill, neurological tendrils shoot into the austere sky and climb straight into the bottomless heaven.  Striding along one day, I spotted a penny. I picked it up. Small, round, plain. One penny. I wrapped it in my hand and kept going. Although hidden, a stray tendril found it and asked, the words resounding soundlessly in reverberating circles around and around and around, yet always back to the same destination:  
--A penny for your thoughts? I’ll take them and share them with the people. Who would listen, you ask? Perhaps no one, and perhaps everyone. Again you ask, why bother then? You may be able to touch a soul, encourage, challenge, or even help it draw closer to its Savior.
--I think I’ll bet a penny on that.  

**    ~~  **

Do you remember the first time you ever chatted with someone? I do quite vividly: in the second semester of ninth grade, I joined The Potter’s School. Upon entering my first virtual class, the one other kid in the classroom arrived typed “hello.” I typed back something to the effect of “I’m really new at this!” and it was a downhill ride from there. Within the year I had contracted three or four chat programs and re-discovered emailing. Life in the online lane had begun.

Time passed, and slowly I began to realize something important: those were people on the other end! Living, moving, breathing human beings! They ate, walked, talked, and had lives away from the computer just as I did. Following this initial shock, I began to want more than just the chat and the email: after all these were fellow souls! Pictures helped. These typed expressions of humanity reassuringly had real human form. Skype introduced voice with its tone, expression, and sincerity, giving more depth to personalities.

Inevitably I began developing relationships. I had fun times, serious times, heated discussions, and laid-back small talk with my peers. We challenged and encouraged one another and worked on various projects. As these typed words and bodiless voices evolved into souls, personalities, and friends, I began to want to see the whole picture—actually meet these wonderful people! Hugs could accompany sympathy, laughter, fun, and passion, discussion. Forced conversations would become truly genuine: human facing human—no barriers.

One day I was day-dreaming—likely during math class, my prime day-dream time—mentally humming a song stuck in my head: ‘I don’t want all my tears turned into wine/And even though I love You anyway. . ./CAN I SEE Your FACE. . . Jesus. . . nothing standing in the way. . . ’ (Tree63“Can I See Your Face”).I pictured my best online friend and how much I wanted to meet her. The joy, excitement, and longing of meeting Jesusfar outweigh this. Actually meeting Him will be ten times that. Compared to the picture I envision at meeting Jesus, meeting an online friend is a blurred, black-and-white photocopy.

Yet the “pictures” I have of Jesus are but “a poor reflection as in a mirror” (I Corinthians 13:12). Whereas now I have only a glimpse, there, in heaven, I will see His full power, glory, and beauty openly displayed. In the meantime, what He has given me makes up far more than even an entire photo album of “pictures.” His creation cries out around me in testimony. Scientists constantly stumble on processes and structures that baffle all comprehension. My own body, tailor-designed for life on this earth, reflects His workmanship. Here I have a small portion of His intricacy and attention to details. Earthquakes, storms, the vastness of the sea, and the endlessness of space show me one small glimpse of His power. Man and woman joined in sacred unity, a mother with her baby, two brothers gather where “a man hung crying in the rain . . . because of love” (David Meece “We are the Reason”). Jesus fully and freely gave His love for me on the cross when He died for my sins. Nations rise, kingdoms fall, time passes, yet all of it together is a drop, a sliver of His future plan for eternity. In the two thousand years since His life, I see a flash of the forever I have. Yet all of this is but a flicker of the lightning bolt; the pictures Jesus gives of Himself are too many to list here, and all of them, culminated in His Word, provide us with only a small part of Him.

Aside from His partially-displayed character, I have His written Word that guides me with the absolute standard of Truth.  Standing unmoving while man-made philosophies blow away like chaff, it alone has the power to give and sustain life. Finally, I have the Holy Spirit! My human relationships are trivial compared to the intimacy of the Spirit. Yet all this is together is still but a taste. I will graduate from the stationary pictures and the faded images to the reality in our eternal home—what glorious thought and hope!

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. . . .(II Corinthians 4)

Incidentally, does anyone know of any cheap plane tickets to Tennessee? I’m thinking of making a trip there to meet my friend. . . .