“I’ll be glad when things get back to normal.” A common sentiment.
2015 has barely begun and our minivan was in the shop for three weeks, we had a houseguest for four weeks, and I had been sick almost continuously since early December. The last day of this month, my wife and I are going to run a 25K trail run up Mt. Constitution on Orcas Island.
When we have the van back, our houseguest has moved out, I regain my normal health and we’re no longer training for a particularly difficult run, things will be back to normal. We’ve been encouraging each other all month with that sentiment– it’ll be so nice when things get back to normal!
Except that we’re expecting our second child in June or July, our 2-year-old is blossoming more spectacularly every day, and we just had three straight days of record heat.
The letter to the Hebrews advises that the world is passing away. They expected the imminent return of Jesus; they really thought they lived in the end times. Maybe they did; maybe we do.
If Jesus returns tomorrow, the 2,000 years that have passed won’t seem such a long time, though for some of us, it has been such a long time, and the world has changed so much, that the idea that Jesus will return in our age of Google and Youtube seems farfetched, and a dauntingly difficult maneuver. Of course, were Jesus to pull it off in His inimitable fashion, we would be embarrassed at how we had underestimated Him.
As individuals, we do pass away. Our worlds pass away.
A 2-year-old lives half his life as a 2-year-old, but that’s maybe 1% of his parents’ lives, a year that includes the unique marvel of watching your child grow up so fast, through the most endearing phases, on his way to becoming a solitary stranger on a bus someday who no one will regard or look at twice.
The child will someday look back on his life and remember his mom and dad and wonder, was I really special to them? Was I a happy little 2-year-old? Was I the center of their lives? Did my parents take the deepest delight in me and wish me every happiness? What remains of that now that I’m an adult who never lived up to peoples’ expectations who now struggles simply to find some small meaning and consolation in life and would love so much to be with them again as we were so long ago for just a little while?
The new normal might someday be a house that once included pet chinchillas, Spirit, Qyx and Butterfly, a dog named Clover, children George and his younger sister Piper and/or his younger brother Oliver, a house in which the parents once went to their day jobs, and drove a 1996 Dodge Grand Caravan.
Some, or all of us, or none of us, might move to different locations. Some of us might drive by this house and stop by the side of the road as time itself stops and we tearfully remember triumphs and tragedies that still haven’t yet happened while other people in this house peek outside and wonder who is that person outside looking at this house.
That person will then return to his or her normal life, remembering a world that has passed away.