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| To celebrate my two-year anniversary at A Considerable Speck, I purchased this lovely original artwork for the empty space above my piano. (Check out |
Two years. That's how long a young man serves a full-time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's also how long I've been living at my current apartment, A Considerable Speck. This is the longest I've stayed in one residence, since leaving my folks' ten years ago. I have called this little duplex "home" for over a third of the time I've been in Utah. Some day I would like to move to a bigger place, capable of hosting groups more comfortably. But for now this is home, as much as a manmade building can be. I am here for something far more permanent than a two-year mission.
And so I find myself living a delicate balance: purposefully sticking around, putting roots down, building relationships, investing in long-term ministry here in Utah Valley; yet being careful not to grow too comfortable in a place whose very existence is a fractioned heartbeat relative to eternity. For all the grandeur and rugged strength of these mountains outside my window, they will pass away at God's appointed time. Meanwhile, I seek an Abrahamic perspective:
By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents [...] for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (Hebrews 11:9-10)
A Considerable Speck, therefore, is just a "tent": a temporary residence on my way to heaven.
That said, I'm tickled that this tent comes with a carport and programmable thermostat.
A Considerable Speck, therefore, is just a "tent": a temporary residence on my way to heaven.
That said, I'm tickled that this tent comes with a carport and programmable thermostat.
3 comments:
You are a good writer, Karisa. I always enjoy reading your words.
Food for thought?
I'm coming around to the idea that the world will be "destroyed" and made new, but that it will not be less than what it is now, only more. I may well be wrong, imagining too little.
But I'd get used to those mountains. This earth, like this body, will be redeemed, resurrected, renewed, and inhabited by Yahweh. The earth will be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.
At least that clicks with me. This is a big topic, but the Gnostic, "spiritual," vapor-heaven of popular evangelicalism has become a source of sad disconnection to me.
I see mountains, rivers, and yes, these mountains and these rivers, in our future. Just like Jesus had his own scars.
Am I a heretic?
It's an intriguing idea, Sam. Thoroughly Narnian, if not explicitly biblical. But then I can't say it's UNbiblical, either; God has revealed precious little about the new heavens and the new earth.
I took a walk this evening, and as I rounded a bend and Mt. Timpanogos came into view above the dazzling reds and golds of fall, I thought about what you wrote. I tried to imagine the scene more glorious than it already was. I couldn't!—but it gave me shivers to think that's possible.
Whatever awaits us, it will be good. I long for it. I long for HIM.
Come, Lord Jesus.
Yes indeed.
Kingdom come. All the way.
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