"The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing —
to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from —
my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing,
all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back."


~C.S. Lewis




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Thursday, August 4, 2016

silver thread of eternity


I think there are little clues, tiny gifts, in life that remind you who you were meant to be.

I don’t know always if God sent them on purpose or if they are simply woven into the eternal world like silver threads through a veil.

They are the signposts we are to follow: This is love. This is purpose. This is home. This is what they feel like, this is what you have been searching for.

I don’t think it has to be like lightning from heaven that changes your life forever. I think it is often the little things.

It is walking into your grandmother’s house, and all is quiet, soft colored curtains blending together and light through the windows, crocheted doilies and the clock that has chimed on the hour for 26 years. And you know what it means to have a home you are at peace in, and you feel the beauty you are meant to see when you walk through your own door. This is what you need to create in your house, this is the home you were meant to have.

It is when you feel the calling on your life, the puzzle-piece place in the world where you were designed to fit. You see glimpses of the things you would die for, the people you wish to fight for, the elements or injustices or visions for this world that keep you awake or bring you to tears or you want to change forever. They are the things that make you feel alive and is the life you were meant to have. This is your vocation; you have found what you love, now let it drive you.

It is the moment you hear from God, visions in your head and words in your mind, and God breaks out of your small rule-bound box. Your friend tells you when a word from heaven saved his life during the war, you speak in a foreign language you were not taught, or the one you prayed for is healed from cancer. Angels whisper to you in that place between awake and asleep, and you let go of religion to see the face of God. This is the touch of God you were meant to know, and the relationship with the divine you were meant to haveDon’t let it go.

There are others. There are moments that show you the love between a man and a woman, the rest available to your heart, the beauty to be found in clothing and paintings and music, the raw power in the art of war. These are the infinite glimpses of eternity.

Hold on to them. Don’t ever let them go. They are the key to abundant life.

For it is in those moments, if we will be quiet enough to feel it and humble enough to accept it, we will feel a sad-sweet longing, a calling to something we do not yet have but know we are created for.

This is our call to redemption, to holiness, and to a world we were made for before evil and pain.

Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said, I will give you rest.

The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.
 ― C.S. Lewis