In ten years time, gravity has done its work. The sides of the mouth pull down unless prompted by a coordinated muscled smile; the ear lobes edge a few millimeters closer to the shoulder blades that now trend towards the belly button; wrinkles have filled in folds; crow's feet guide tears laterally before they, too, give way to the heavy pull of earthen center. We have sunk a little easier into ourselves, or maybe just lost track of time. We have lamented inevitable change and  still straightened up to carry on. ‘Sally forth!’ is a formidable task when one is tired. But here we are. The heart has resolutely thundered out the necessary drum beats stirred by adrenalin. At times, it has nearly burst with the beauty and misery of the fragile condition, observed in self and others. 

In ten years time, there is a gathered heaviness. Maybe you feel it too. These signs that we have fought certainty of outcomes, surrendered to the whims of disease, been ministered to by angels in stranger’s garments, leaned into the everlasting arms, witnessed the anguished soul - in self and others. We have been quiet and peaceful; full of rage towards injustice; furious at powerlessness; fearful of the dark; collapsed upon scripture; convinced that daylight would come. Forces have shaken us into complicit silence and determined protest - pointed fists at that Accuser who thwarts Goodness. Long nights when we have pounded earth until bruises form, a reminder that striving is in vain - for “Who has known the mind of the Lord?”  

the sun rises

persuaded by the same gravity. 

Ten years that have felt like one hundred.

Maybe you, too, have been showered with gifts, barred from entry, plagued by doubts, robbed of rest, shunned by onlookers, chided by presumption, welcomed by understanding, ignored by leadership, bewildered by mystery, commended by saints and constantly questioned by a host to an absent memory wearing misfitting clothes a decade out of style. Maybe you also understand that deep wellspring of being recipient of Grace -  decades before we met the world, armed by previous generations and ready with the curious awareness of God that lit up the path of child, teen, adult  - not because of who we were or are but because of that Balancer of Clouds (Job 37:16) and Lover to the Broken (John 3).  The prayers of a remnant have lifted up heavy arms, those who refuse to hope in anything less than the Ancient of Days. A collective faith has transmitted resilience; achingly beautiful interactions line the walls of a mind; countless faces emerge that should qualify for badges of bravery; but still - those frightened footsteps echo with the mental race of someone who couldn’t find his way anywhere but back to his center of gravity- the arms of Jesus.

Here, too, we go  - carrying 

this backdrop of a decade. 

I have learned that this ache will  not leave, but must reside alongside other decades of life - past and future. It is a heavy thing to mourn, to remember, to carry time.  

It is here with you all that I feel some understanding of the magnitude represented in a squared-off box on a calendar: April 22nd   - the day that defied gravity and spun our world into fragmented dreams. 

It is probable that Nature is not really in Time and almost certain that God is not. Time is probably (like perspective) the mode of our perception. There is therefore in reality no question of God's at one point in time (the moment of creation) adapting the material history of the universe in advance to free acts which you or I are to perform at a later point in Time. To Him all the physical events and all the human acts are present in an eternal Now. The liberation of finite wills and the creation of the whole material history of the universe (related to the acts of those wills in all the necessary complexity ) is to Him a single operation. In this sense God did not create the universe long ago but creates it at this minute - at every minute .

From "Miracles" by C. S. Lewis