September 8, 2011

• Space

  There’s a story that someone told me. He claimed it was true. There’s a girl in his friend’s classroom who spells her name “L-A.” When the teacher meets with the parent on registration day, she asks what “L.A” stood for. The mother, in obvious aggravation, snorts, “It’s pronounced La-DASH-ah. Cuz the ‘dash’ ain’t silent!!” 

  This story is yet to be confirmed (being the scientist that I like to think I am, I researched to see how common this name was, or if I could find this mystery woman online, and found an article on snopes instead. I was mildly disappointed.) But just as La-DASH-ah’s “dash” is not silent, thus is my life and loves, and the spaces between. 

  Sabbath afternoon is when I found my appetite. It’s nice to have it back. 

  Wednesday night is when I found my soul. It’s nice to remember how it felt like to have that peaceful joy. 

  Wedged where I left it, untended to, and filed in with the cares that piled on in the past 5 months, it was still intact. 

  But I’ve been changed. Subtly, but enough. Enough where certain verses in the Bible ring deeper than they did before. Where certain insights are more than just theological insights or practical insights… but an insight borne about only through empathy. The book of Isaiah touches even closer to the marrow of my Christian experience than before. There whispers somewhere, “Ah! I know how that is now.” It’s like the ground has been turned over and things smell like rain and dirt and life. 

  

  I’m reminded of CS Lewis’ depiction of us as a living house. 

  “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

  We are not cottages. Christ is not a contractor who will only do what He is told. The spaces in our rooms are not meant to be silent. They speak, and they are the epistles that contains volumes of life lessons that are meant to be shared. We are not improvements on the old. 

  I’m hungry. 

   

   

  • 10:05 am
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