A Message from the Future

Comer struggled to get in the car yesterday when I picked up he and Evelyn from the Assisted Living home.
"How are you today?" I asked.
"Oh fine except these legs are just not working the way they used to. You know I was always athletic. Now I can barely walk. I never thought I'd end up like this." 
This was uncharacteristic of Comer. He doesn't usually complain, at least not around me.
"Did you ever think you would make it to 93?" I asked.
"No, there were days in the war I didn't think I'd make it to that evening."
"Well maybe being a little weak in the legs is not a bad payoff."
"No, maybe not."
I had to scream every word during our outing, or he couldn't hear it. My throat was sore by the end of our time together. When we pulled up to the fast food window, I screamed our order. The cashier stepped back, with the force of my words.
"Mom," reminded Asherel quietly, "You don't need to shout to her." 
"Oh, that's true..." I said, glancing in the mirror at Comer and Evelyn, smiling and holding hands as usual.  "Thank you, " I whispered, as the cashier handed back the credit card.

I read in the paper that scientists think they have discovered a particle that moves faster than the speed of light. This throws Einstein out on the curb with the other discarded certainties of human discovery. But the really captivating part of that discovery is if it is true, then time travel is possible. Einstein had always said that if anything could be found to travel faster than light, then we could send a telegram to the past.  I thought about that. I could send a telegram to me yesterday before I used my finger to clean the inside of the sharp container and I would not be wearing a bandaid on a throbbing thumb today. Think of all the accidents that have had devastating consequences that could be avoided, and all the severed relationships that could be mended as words and actions were all taken back...or deleted as though they never happened. Think of all the wisdom of the years that we could write down to warn and guide our younger selves, our selves that were athletes before  the onslaught of time and muscle decay.

  Knowing what we know, what would we do differently? And if we did it differently, because of that time traveling telegram, when we reached the point in the future when the telegram would be sent, it would not need to be sent anymore, but if it was never sent, then the past would be unchanged....and....you see the problem. In my case, there would be too many telegrams that would need to be sent. About one every ten minutes.

"Vicky, this is a message from your future. I would strongly recommend you do not do what you are about to do."
"Vicky, this is another message from your future. I would highly suggest you do not say what you are about to say."
"Vicky, this is yet another message from your future. I want to warn you that your future is taking up so much time warning you about all the stupid things you are doing in your past, that when you get here, all you will be doing is writing warning messages. Not much of a life, if you ask me."

So God has solved the problem. He put every warning in a Book that could be adapted to every situation. And then, traveling faster than light, He looked back at what He had created, and He shook His head.
  "They mean well, sometimes, but they are not paying as much attention to the Book as I had hoped."

And so He knew what He had to do from the Beginnning, because being faster than Light, He could see even from that moment how badly we were going to manage even a simple task like not tasting a forbidden fruit.  So He arranged a telegram from the Future, that would travel all the way back to our Past, and all Pasts, and dwell within us to remind us all the time what we needed to remember so that our Future would not be one of continual regret, writing messages of all the things we should have done. And He saw that even then, we would blow it. So He sent the most perfect Solution of all creation. He sent Redemption and Atonement based not on what we could do, which we had proven was prone to disaster, but on what He could do. And the only requirement of us was Faith. Why faith, I often wonder. Here is what I think. You cannot take a leap of faith without humility. It is pride that makes us think we can achieve perfection. Pride that thinks we can be God. Pride that thinks we don't need anyone but ourselves. And time is the greatest humbler of all. None of us think those athletic legs will one day no longer be able to walk. All of us recoil from arrogance, and most of us don't see it in ourselves. Why do we all have such a negative response to arrogance? I think it is because it is in the end what separates us, from each other, from God.


I would write more, but I am getting telegrams by the minute from my future.....


2 Kings 19:22-23
²² Who is it you have ridiculed and blasphemed?
   Against whom have you raised your voice
and lifted your eyes in pride?
   Against the Holy One of Israel!
²³ By your messengers
   you have ridiculed the Lord.

The Work of An Artist's Hand

Once I was painting the ocean and squeezed out red from my paint tube. A man approached me and said, " I had to come see your painting. I own a gallery and when I saw you dip your brush in red paint to paint the ocean in the middle of the day....I thought I better have a look."
He gazed at my watercolor, then handed me his card, and told me to see him with a my portfolio when I had a chance. I found it gratifying that from a tiny sketch of a red tinged ocean this gallery owner thought he saw something worth looking into further.

I wonder if my son and his bride will gaze at the colors in their faces on the wedding portrait I am painting and feel similarly.
"Why are their faces so red?" asked Asherel.
"Too much?" I asked.
She nodded.
"I suppose you will tell me the purple shadow beside the nose has to go too?"
I am struggling with this portrait. I mixed up more realistic flesh tones and got back to work. And then I noticed that the bright white dress I had painted, might not really be a bright white dress.
I emailed Karissa, the beautiful bride to be.
She was studying for finals, and writing class papers, and applying to law schools. I knew she would drop it all to answer me over this important question.
"Does your dress have a touch of ivory in it?"
There was the email equivalent of arched eyebrows and a long pause.
"I have no idea," came the response, "It's white- exactly like the picture I sent."
But white has a thousand potential nuances. And my printer doesn't print exactly as the monitor displays the color....
"It definitely has a touch of ivory in it," said Asherel.
So back to work on the dress which I had actually thought was done months ago.
"Does Matt's hair really look like a basketball?" asked Asherel, of course in the kindest manner possible.
It was too perfectly coiffed and rounded. I sighed. I am using water soluble oil paints so they are easily cleaned like acrylics, but take a week or so to fully dry, unlike acrylics. That means any big changes require at times a week of waiting between new coats. It seems that every time I lay down my brushes and say, "It is finished!", when I look back at it, or Asherel does, a new flaw emerges. And when I change one thing....well then suddenly everything around it needs changing. This is one of the most laborious labors of love I have ever engaged in.

How did God get it all done in a week?
There is one thing that all the struggles, turmoils, stumbles, and falls of my life have taught me. I am not God.
If I had been, we would all be walking around with one eye 3 cm higher than the other, noses just slightly off center and teeth that curved and meandered. Our cheeks would be suffused with a greenish purple glow and our necks would have an extra tendon. For this reason alone, it is good that I am not God.

However, I think one of the hardest lessons of my life has been that even if I were offered the job, I would not want to be God, nor am I qualified. As a kid, I think I thought I could pass muster. The older and "wiser" I get, the more I understand that running a universe smoothly is much harder than one would think.

And maybe similarly, my perspective is as limited as my qualifications. Perhaps all that I see is my little corner, but the real God has to see every corner....simultaneously. Maybe all this senseless stuff makes sense to the one who can gather it all into one canvas.

Last night, I finished the last sparkle of white on my portraits' eyes and stepped back.
"It is good!" I said.
But that is what I said before I started repainting them this morning too......
"Well ok, it is good for today. We will see about tomorrow when it comes."
Unlike God, I can't see around the corner either.

Song of Solomon 7:1
 ¹ How beautiful your sandaled feet,
   O prince’s daughter!
Your graceful legs are like jewels,
   the work of an artist’s hands.

Waiting

As I sat in the car waiting for Asherel, I started to add up the hours I have sat in the car waiting for my kids over the years. I am pretty sure I could not calculate them all without the use of logarithms, and since I am still a little shaky on my logarithm skill, suffice it to say, it adds up to at least half my life. Back in the days when I would wait for Anders, I would watch Matthias and Asherel climb on the modern art at UNCC. Then while waiting for Matthias once Anders was off on his own, I would walk with Asherel and point out all the bugs and other small creatures we could find. When Matt went off on his own, and I wait now for Asherel, I bring my iPod and sketch, memorializing these days. It will be just a turn of the page, and I will have no one left to wait for.

So I spend time now as I sit in the car looking at the world around me and fill the pockets of my soul with the beautiful blessings of God's creation. Yesterday I sketched the clouds, and realized most of the summer there were no clouds in NC. Just wide open blue sky. There is always something to draw. Always something left to wonder about, to love, to explore, to honor.

It doesn't feel like waiting. It never really did. It always felt like joyful expectation of being reunited, with excited voices and flushed cheeks crashing down beside me and saying, "That was fun!".  Each of us had had our own adventures to recount- theirs often much more exciting than mine, but mine were maybe more precious in some ways. Their adventures were of dashing off into a world they didn't yet know that would carry them ultimately away for a time. Mine were of reconnecting with a world that had always been there, right under my feet and beside my hand, waiting to be caressed, waiting to be noticed.

Waiting is one of the supreme characteristics of God. He watches as we scurry about exploring all the new places we think we need to go to find abundant life. And He waits, knowing that the world is finite, as is our strength. Ultimately we plop down and look around, and if we are weary enough, finally look right at Him.
"That was fun," we say, as we crawl into His embrace,"Thanks for waiting."

Psalm 130:5-7 (New International Version)

 ⁵ I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
       and in his word I put my hope.
 ⁶ My soul waits for the Lord
       more than watchmen wait for the morning,
       more than watchmen wait for the morning.
 ⁷ O Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
       for with the LORD is unfailing love
       and with him is full redemption.