Glimpses of the Real

Do you ever feel like time stands still and for a moment you can almost understand how truly temporary this physical life is?

Like if you could just squint hard enough and look deep enough you could really “GET IT” but just as you start to see it.. everything goes black again. Life goes back to normal, the hum returns and all you’ve got to show for the near epiphany is a shiver down your spine.

Maybe you think I’m crazy. But this happens to me from time to time. I am suddenly struck deep with the “futility” of the physical world (the grass withers, the flower fades) and the utter pointlessness of most of our material things (especially things like credit scores and cavities) and for one drawn out moment my soul longs to be on the other side where there are no credit scores and cavities and everything makes sense.

I’m not suicidal and I’m not crazy. I don’t want to sell 100% of my belongings and live in the bush and I don’t want to ignore things like credit scores and cavities. Well, I don’t really care about the credit scores but at least not the cavities.

I’m just saying that, “Yo, this ain’t gonna last forever, y’all.”

And I know that in my head all the time.. but sometimes I can feel it and see it like it’s right there in front of me.

I’m going to take care of my teeth because God wants me to take care of my body but I’m not taking my teeth to Heaven with me so in the end.. they don’t matter. I’m going to take care of my credit score because God wants me to be a good steward of my finances but in the end, it doesn’t matter either. I will make sure we have enough clothes and food and other necessities but they aren’t going to last forever and they aren’t gonna do us much good “on the other side.”

I’d like to say that we need to keep perspective but honestly every time it happens it feels like it knocks everything OUT of perspective.

I suppose it’s because even when we have our priorities right and our perspective is good, with our finite minds we still can’t really get it. We don’t have the perspective God has. So when we get a glimpse of it, it shakes things up inside our head for just a minute.

I don’t know if God is going to give us all the answers when we get to Heaven. But I am sure that we’ll finally have true perspective, because we will finally be able to see everything from the right vantage point.

Wonder what the view looks like from Heaven?

Photo by Nick Russill, used under Creative Commons 2.0