It's another Sunday, another day for church, another day for close communion with God, but a new one still. A day to smile at the friends we see, to bow with heavy weights of conversation with a holy God, and to weep, inwardly at least, at the goodbyes that have to be made on this Sunday. Those goodbyes really take a lot out of me.

I slip my shoes off, and stand upon the holy ground of worship. My heart is lifted, not always my hands (some things I think churches will only realize the importance of in heaven), but a heavy weight of weariness is replaced with the golden weight of glory, and a stronger hand holds my weaker heart and more beautifully perfect eyes hold my own eyes, and this is why we're here on this broken earth, this is why we are in a broken world; to display the beauty of his goodness even in the holes of sadness and sin. And the heartache of the brokenness, though the pain is not any less, is revealed as a doorway into a beauty beyond words and even thoughts, because though it seems strange that pain would become beautiful, the pain that is endured and that is received with the knowledge that a good and perfect plan is set for us is the greatest beauty, is even more beautiful than the laughter that we use to cover our tears.

Gifts are spread so liberally around, and we count, and we thank, but so many blessings flow that we miss many of them. The laughter melts into our hearts and shines through our eyes, and the tears threaten to flow when we hug the ones we love whose time here is short. And in spite of the question of the why of pain, the sadness that sinks into our soul is not a sadness devoid of hope because we see, in spite of the vale of tears, however blurred, a purpose, a plan, a perfect reason, and we remember eternity, with no more tears, and a realization of the reason all the tears were shed on this broken ground.

The warm sun beats down, and we drive home from church. I drive home from church. :)

A butterfly flies fast past, but not fast enough to escape the car's speed. It's pulsing, beating wings crush from the windshield's impact, and in a tiny second I watch a clear and startling example of the fragility of life.

The road winds on and on, curve after curve, uphill after downhill. We drive its entirety, but it's not an eternity. The eternity, or our taste of it, comes at the end, when we arrive home. When we still ourselves and we laugh and smile and carry the weights of our own burdened hearts and of others. We hug, and we sing, and we love, and the light of Someone greater shines upon us.

And this is a day on this broken world? This is what he's given us to endure? This is the sorrow that comes before the perfect joy? The sorrow that is not without hope? And we dare complain?

Jesus, I am resting, resting, in the joy of what thou art, I am finding out the greatness of thy loving heart. 


And that is the purpose and the goal sweetly given to us, and we dare receive it with weariness? This life of love, and we are tired of it? We look for something more?

Teach us, Christ, to rest in you, and there find our everything.