Mortality May Be Swallowed Up By Life

My image

I only brought one empty notebook with me. Okay, well, one notebook alongside a handful of miscellaneous reading material and a journal that's so pretty I'm scared to start writing in it. In case you're wondering, this is my version of packing lightly. Tea and books come first. Everything else is of secondary importance.

The point is, that with one notebook and a plethora of thoughts, I'm forced to be a bit conservative of space. Instead of following my usual modus operandi of flipping to blank pages and indulging in random and reckless scribbles, I have been very diligently marshaling my thoughts into order. Bible verses decorated with fanciful borders, to-do lists, teaching notes, scraps of half-fledged poetry and blog posts and a newsletter outline are all crammed together in an economical fashion.

As I flipped through the already-battered pages, looking for a blank space to write, I realized that this little notebook presents a surprisingly accurate representation of my life as it now is. Everything is together in one small space. The sacred and the mundane live side-by-side. I wash dishes and I worship. I search for statistics and I search for rhymes. The borders between the realms of spirit and flesh have grown perilously thin, and the one leaks through and sanctifies the other. I have begun to truly appreciate Jesus' title of Emmanuel:

God with us 

God with me. Divine eternity, clothed in flesh, participating with me in daily life. 

I live each day in the knowledge of the mysterious unknown and the certainty that the eternal draws steadily nearer. I have always imagined death to be like this, and the comparison is really quite fitting. I am dying. Each day, little by little, I am putting to death the sins and desires of my fallen nature. I carry the death of Christ always about with me as I die to the old and come alive to the eternal and the new.

The kingdom of God is among us.

Bible verses should mix with newsletters, to-do lists should be written with prayer, and chores be jumbled together with worship. The separation between the sacred and the ordinary should be gradually decreasing, not so that the sacred will become less holy, but that the ordinary may be sanctified - made extraordinary - through contact with the divine.

Old things have passed away, and look, new things have come!

2 Corinthians 5:17