The Stream of Time
It’s 6:20 AM and I’m watching these kids watch the sunrise on Labor Day weekend at East Harbor. It’s a study in youth: impulsive, silly and random comments, talking over one other, emotional outbursts, and so absorbing! It’s a study in Venus and Mars: diffuse guys, active, energetic, guitar-heroes framed against the horizon, boasting, theatrical (supposing the girls are watching). The girls clump, sit, oblivious, and twitter.
Sweet spontaneity, soon all gone! Adulthood looms in the stream of time.
What I now remember and think of is Scot’s death, my young brother. The sky is on fire with sunrise colors, far too glorious to bear, and the music playing was from his tribute.
Where is the beauty of Scot now? Does he shine with the glory of the sunrise?
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What magic this morning is! I can see, I think, the way Jesus sees it when his children come together in the spiritual realm called the Body of Christ. This is the gathering of shared presence, when “the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.” (Col.2:19)
It affects change, even without deliberate effort, in the same way our own bodies distribute life. It’s impossible to predict the effects, but they will be good effects because the spiritual stuff of shared presence always leaves a deep, intangible mark in the stream of time.
Anchors of the Soul.
This moment will burrow deep in their hearts as a memory of a time called “friendship” and a moment called “love”. No, not the deep intimacy of marriage or even close friends, yet still it will be an Anchor of the Soul, and it heals even a heart filled with pain. Perhaps this is because there’s so many of them gathered, and they all belong to Jesus and Jesus is here, and they know each other, and they love and delight in each other’s presence. What heart-piercing energy! Found nowhere else on the planet, it is unique to this place in the stream of time.
Scot left many such moments littered in my heart.
Such is the stream of time…
