BitterSweetLife

I was lying on my back, examining the ceiling in our bedroom around midnight. Our ceiling fan looks Spanish—brassy and oddly ostentatious. The concrete ceiling looks like it was molded with planks; long horizontal furrows run from wall to wall. I thought, “And God is even here, in this room.”

It occurred to me that for as long as I can remember, I have liked to stretch out at night and consider the fact that Christ is present within the specific contours of my room. That includes rooms shared with brothers in three different houses, a second story bedroom in a place Lindsay and I house-sat after our honeymoon, two urban lofts, and an assortment of motel rooms and tents.

I wonder what it is about proximity that grips and holds me over the years. Nearness to the divine is a treasure I keep reminding myself I have. On a fundamental level, I think we are simply built this way. We live by our senses. To be loved is to be seen, heard, touched, and visa versa. And I think there we feel a premonition of the day coming when we will see Christ, not merely standing in a corner of our room, but filling the earth and sky. The sixth sense we had all along that He was present, even here, will be verified as accurate.

That’s when we will become like him. Sanctification will flare to life and explode with an instantaneous incandescence that would have killed us before. A lifetime of sin’s mutations will be reduced to ash in a moment and something strong and eternal and clean and invincibly happy will rise from those ashes.

You and I have wondered why our lives take on the characteristics of Christ’s so slowly. The truth is that this side of heaven, our beings could not endure the friction of such a transformation, if it was accelerated. We inch along year by year to avoid death by sudden glory. But when Jesus stands on the same earth we do and breathes our air again, our bodies and souls will be stabilized. Christ will say, “NOW,” and slow sanctification, that long-burning fuse, will explode into final glorification.**

That’s when we’ll be changed in a moment. We don’t know exactly how, we don’t know exactly when, and we don’t know the precise shape and color of the goodness we’ll find waiting. But we do know that Jesus is the King who will bring peace and healing and fulfill every expectation of joy. That is why we like to remember that although we cannot see him today, nevertheless, he is standing in the room.

**This is a theory, anyway. :)