halfway home

Thunderstorms last night made the morning a little damp and hazy, but still warm enough to forego the jackets for school and spring-like enough that there are birds audible outside our windows. The children were cheerful and prompt in getting ready this morning, which is always a blessing. (Note I am not saying that is how we always are... just that it is a blessing when we are.) Two loaves of bread are neatly covered in towels in the fridge, awaiting the baking stage this morning which is always the best part of the process. The living room is tidy because we made efforts to get it that way last night, and my body feels rested.

God feels very near to us in those moments of peace... much more near than He sometimes feels in the intense throes of a problem or situation where we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. On the mornings when no one can find their shoes, people are nervous about this test or that audition, and good lunch food seems to have evaporated from our refrigerator, I do not feel quite the same way. God feels far away and elusive, I feel like my problems are probably unimportant in the grand scheme of things but still very real and loud in my head, and life in general begins to feel deeply overwhelming, very quickly.

"God is majestic and glorious, as well as personal and near to us," my Bible study stated this morning. "Why is it important that we recognize both aspects of his character?"

A good writing prompt, I thought. So much could be said here.

When we see God as majestic and glorious, we've put Him in His proper place and we are able to see clearly that He is in control, that all things were created through Him and for Him (Colossians 1), and we see Him as the praiseworthy-Person-in-charge that He actually is. We are able to maintain the head knowledge that nothing is outside of His authority and that should settle us and make us rest. But at the same time, when we see Him as ONLY majestic and glorious, we sometimes become unable to go to Him with our needs and fears, because He seems to us to be somewhere inaccessible to us. Far away and very busy with things that we don't even know about, we are hesitant to bother Him with our relatively minor struggle.

But at the same time, if we make Him only personal and near to us, there would be little purpose in us going to Him with our struggles anyway because if He is not majestic and glorious and omnipotent and all-powerful, He wouldn't have the means to pull us out of our struggle anyway. If we bring God down to our level without acknowledging His great gloriousness, we still have nowhere to go in our need because we aren't seeing Him for Who He is.

And so we find it's necessary then to lean into both characteristics of Him simultaneously - to know that He is both far and near, majestic and personal, above and beside, with us where we are and leading us onward, in the peaceful mornings and in the hard ones... He is all to us, and He is all to all of creation.

On his layover this morning, Grant texted me: "halfway home!" And that is where we find ourselves... halfway between, spanning the gap, trusting a God who created and runs the entire world to be able and interested in being involved in the details of everyday life. His plan is both known and unknown, and we are part of it. There is death in God's plan but there is also victory over death in God's plan.

"He rises, glorified in flesh

Clothed in immortality, the firstborn from the dead

He rises, and His work's already done

So He's resting as He rises to reclaim the Bride He won

And His heart beats

So crown Him the Lord of Life

Crown Him the Lord of Love

Crown Him the Lord of All"

-His Heart Beats, Andrew Peterson