We live in a world of scraped-up hearts. We know we do, because
they beat within our chests. Someone left us, or ignored us, or didn’t
want us after all, and our insides take a tumble, falling hard on the rough
concrete of reality. We’re hurting, and the band aids of busyness and
distraction we apply are powerless to stop the bleeding. How many days
have we wanted to run away and go home? If only we knew where home was...
We live in a Wooden
World, cast in perpetual shadow.
There are rumors of gold and a Maker who cares, but it’s hard to imagine
such things in the light of our steady grey sky. It’s easier to ignore
dangerous rumors than to hope in something which, in the end, runs the risk of
being nothing more than a shadow. Shadows, we understand. Pain, we understand.
Disappointment, we understand. Hope (real hope, not Disney movie hope) is
another creature entirely.
We live in a broken world of broken people. The freedom that was
granted to make love possible has been twisted into a fierce conviction to do
it “my way”, and our lives are built on the collective consequences of
generation after generation determined to do things “their way”. Doing it
“my way” might be the stuff from which epic lyrics are born, but in the real
world, it is the stuff that births abuse, alcoholism, abandonment, and any
other manner of sorrow Frank forgot to mention.
Wickweed is forbidden not because of what it does to Ahavi, but because
of what it does to the Mud Men. God is intolerant of sin not because it hurts
Him, but because of how deeply it hurts us. It is the creator of
scraped-up hearts, disappointments, brokenness, and the shadow of pain that
hovers just under the surface of our smiles. Sin, in a wicked sleight of
hand, has actually done it his way.
While page after page of the Bible is filled with stories about sin and
its painful consequences, none of us needs to look farther than stories written
from the pages of our own lives, compilations of consequences we have
suffered for our own sins and for the sins of others. We know shame and guilt
and separation. We bear scars left by the storm of another’s sin, as they
bear the scars left in the wake of ours. We go round and round on a
merry-go-round of pain that isn’t very merry at all.
The problem is that
we’re Plan A people
living in a Plan B
world.
Nothing fits, because nothing is quite the right size. The Mud
Men were meant to live in the great Golden City. They were meant to see
and know and talk to Ahavi whenever they wanted to. They were meant to
respect each other and look out for the best in one another; they were meant to
make their city golden in ways that had nothing to do with the architecture.
We were made to live in the presence of God, absent of pain and struggle
and fear and disappointment. The taste of guilt should be foreign to us,
as should the bitter gutting of betrayal; the constant delicate dread of being found out is a tightrope our feet were never meant to walk.
Our souls have learned to compensate for sin by twisting and distorting
who we are until we have become a being so far from what we were designed to
be, that only the Keeper of the original blueprints remembers who we really
are.
But promises have been made that all things will be put to right
again. Ahavi swears that the Golden City will not lie empty forever.
The final pages of the Bible conclude with the best of beginnings, a Happily
Ever After of our very own:
“Then I saw a new heaven
and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and
there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming
down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her
husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the
dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His
people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every
tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or
pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
He who was seated on the
throne said, "I am making everything new!"...”
(Revelation 21:1-5)
“The city does not need
the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and
the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the
earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut,
for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be
brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does
what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the
Lamb's book of life."
(Revelation 21:23-27)
“Then the angel
showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the
throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city.
On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of
fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the
healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God
and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve Him. They will
see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more
night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the
Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.”
(Revelation 22:1-5)
This is the story of Nyssa. And Odeda.
And Terrance and Malina and all of us on planet Earth. There is a city of
gold and a twinkling river that runs through it, a home that waits for us where
we are safe and loved and known. What has been broken will be restored. What has been lost will be found. We who have
wandered away can find our way home, if we are willing to call the One who
will lead us there.
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