Unsatisfied with Stars...

It has been nine strange months.  I packed all my things and drove them from Chicago to Atlanta, knowing full well the motions my body would go through in the coming weeks but being then still entirely blind to what my heart would have to feel.  The cognitive dissonance of January is still a peculiar memory.  Laying in the ground the body of one so deeply loved and clinging tightly to the aging hands of those that remain, I felt it necessary to affect a smile, return to the daily habits of life, and - of all things - celebrate a birthday.  I flew to Houston for work and then drove to Chicago three months later to receive a document that said I was done with yet another season in life.  I sat in a chair on the second row of Torrey-Gray in disbelief, feeling the weight of a gift so generous and hoping that it might not have been given in vain.  These last months have carried on in the usual tempo, and yet I find myself in strange places. 

All the while I have become increasingly aware of my humanness, perhaps most obviously the result of both my age and the sorrow of more than a year.  Forgive the morbid nature of the thought, but I fully realize that I possess a body bound for the grave.  More perplexing still, this inner existence, whatever it may be termed, seems just as fatally bound.  I don't mean to refer to the theology I learned quite early in my childhood, I mean rather the constant brick wall collision of trying to fix an aspect or two or ten of the horrifying side of my character which I ordinarily try so hard to keep hidden.  I can be purely disgusted with the gut instinct level of my critical thoughts and in five minutes find myself tearing down the actions of a coworker or, sadder still, a real friend.  In these moments, I am powerless, exasperated, and often hopeless. 

This is accompanied by a desperate search for God.  For the sake of clarification, I do not mean that I have abandoned faith altogether, but rather that I am grasping for God in the place that I am - in the place that I know He is, too. 

And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward Him and find Him.  Yet He is actually not far from each one of us. (Acts 17.26-27)

I cannot say that I've studied the context of this verse deeply, but I do know that it has brought great comfort to me in recent months.  He cannot be far from here.  He put me in the time and place that I am with all the blessings and wounds that come with it, knowing that it would have the full potential to erupt in me a desire to stretch out my hand in search of Him.  Better still, the search is not futile; He is meant to be found. 

I have also been reading Wright's Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.  It has been a gift in due season.  He opens this work with a dream of a question.  "Supposing someone came forward out of the fog to meet us?" he asks (xiii-xiv).  It is a dream, and I am mindful all the while what absolute fluff this must sound like to anyone whose worldview does not align with the orthodox tenets of Christianity or Judaism.  Yet it is the outlandish hope born out of the resurrection of Jesus which I have tried to embrace, hoping that it might change my life.  Perhaps this child-of-resurrection hope can cure a heart broken both by its own idolatry as well as the crushing moments of this heavy life. 

Yet, Wright would chide me still for my misguided take on the resurrection hope.  Look more intently, he says.  Have the audacity to look beyond this life.  Stretch your arm out further still to the hope that finally awaits.  Press past the unimaginable wonder of death, life after death, heaven, and the glory of the immediate presence of God.  Ponder the plan of the God unsatisfied with stars. 

We have often been taught the bookends of Creation and Consummation.  What a wonderful story they tell, one quite beyond our comprehension and still worth our deepest thoughts.  Yet, perhaps another lens through which to gaze is the one bounded by Creation and Re-Creation.  This is the ultimate hope - not that we would lay these mortal bodies down for heaven but that we might pick them up again.  Turn your gaze ever so slightly from the sweet by-and-by to the rolling away of many stones, to the sound of a great trumpet, and to the hope of the resurrection of the sons of God which necessarily follows the resurrection of the Son of Man.  The many, many rooms in my Father's house are temporary dwellings.  We are bound for the new heaven and the new earth.

It is with this hope in mind that I marvel anew at the psalmist's words.  When I think about the beauty of this creation and the unimaginable glory of the one to come, "what is man that You are mindful of him?" (Ps. 8.4a).  Not only will He remake the stars, He will remake us.  Though not out of nothing this time but instead of something.  Something out of the hands that rocked babies.  Something of the heart that loved so much.  Something out of someone.  Many someones, in fact.  It is to this hope that I cling. 

And in His Kingdom we will shine "like the stars forever and ever" (Dan. 12.3).