the five-minute shopping spree...

I recently recalled one of my favorite daydreams from when I was seven years old. I was fixated on the idea of a "five-minute shopping spree" that a toy store used to advertise. I had created a "hit list" to utilize the five minutes most effectively.

1) The candy is closest to the front, so immediately grab plenty of candy boxes for the cart.
2) Dash to the sports cards; proceed to extract the baseball/football cards from the shelf.
3) Find the best bike quickly; get bike.
4) Get as many Lego sets as possible.
5) Gather all necessary items for a massive model train world.
6) Get Nintendo and accessories.
7) Find remote control boat and plane.

Never quite realized that one...

humans are eternal...

It has often been said that faith in Jesus means knowing where you go when you die. It's technically true and certainly a statement full of hope and comfort.

Ironically, though, I find that my experience is more accurately described as knowing where I'm going while I'm living. As C.S. Lewis noted, we are eternal beings regardless of our relationship with God. We were created to exist forever; the reality that so wrenches the heart is the tremendous divide between eternal life and eternal death.

Skeptics tend to condescend on the notion that humans are eternal. Yet, logically, if an eternally Creator made creatures designed to be in a relationship with Him, they would have to be eternal. If they rejected that relationship with Him, that divide would not change their eternal nature. They would then be eternally estranged from Him; they would not cease to exist.

I have complete faith in God to keep His promise that I will never experience death. I will simply pass from one life to another life when my body fails. There will be no moment when I am not alive, regardless of my brief lack of body. Even that will be restored in a timely manner. My present experience is that I am already eternally alive.

So, I spend very little time focusing on death--it was already conquered when Jesus rose from the grave, never to return. Rather, this tiny fraction of my eternal life must be lived to its maximum potential. This life, a few steps of imperfection in a marathon of perfection, must daily be conquered in the peace which can be found when one lays their burdens and shame on Christ.

This life is a first taste of eternal life for those who have joined in the freedom from death that Jesus provides. It was meant to be lived full to the brim with the love, joy and truth that flows from the God who created us. It grieves me that for so many who reject Jesus, they are already tasting the emptiness of the eternal death they have chosen--separation from the eternal God who made them.

It's been years since I've been so deeply awake...
This soul must be fed up with sleeping...
This mind must be fed up with dreaming...

These veins course full with pure, liquid mint...
Reviving sensations I thought to be lost...
Reminders of body parts long forgotten..
Urging me to breathe with sure intention...
Five, joyful senses singing as one chorus...
My mind reaching out to touch as I see...
Splintered wood and rainbowed mural,
Tear-shaped, saltless rain and cold, cold metal...

My heart seems to drink so slowly, too slowly!
This beauty rushes past me so quickly, too quickly!
A crystal current of mint-laced, living water...
Your well-spring gushing infinite, abundant life...
One may drink always deeper without fear of drowning...

I see now...
A thousand lifetimes once ended would find
My fiercest thirst had been quenched with a drop...

my first memories...

1. age 3, Deerfield, IL--while my dad was going to grad school, i got in trouble for escaping my mom and wandering around the campus...
2. age 3, Deerfield, IL--riding trains and going to Taco Bell with my mom...
3. age 3, Libertyville, IL--while playing in our yard, an awful twelve-car pileup drew me toward the street, where i forever remember a man covered in blood sitting on the curb...
4. age 4, Libertyville, IL--learning to ride my bike in the parking lot of our apartment building...
5. age 4, Libertyville, IL--almost two feet of snow fell, giving me the opportunity to build an elaborate tunnel system from our door through the yard...
6. age 4, Libertyville, IL--looking for/dreading tornadoes at a lonely park...it was my "tornado watching area"...
7. age 4, Libertyville, IL--ending up in a dumpster in the parking lot while hiding from bullies...
8. age 4, Libertyville, IL--serenading a girl from the building next to us...we spent every single day together...
9. age 5, Libertyville, IL--getting scared out of my mind by a prank my brother played on me...
10. age 5, Libertyville, IL--listening to stories in kindergarten...
11. age 6, Libertyville, IL--having the only birthday party i've ever had at pizza hut the day before we moved to Winslow...
12. age 6, Winslow, IL--feeling like i was in a movie as we moved into the parsonage (which my parents, brother, sisters still live in)...thinking it was very old...
13. age, 6, Winslow, IL--our neighbor Clyde threatening to call the police on us for playing on his woodpile (which was adjacent to our yard)...
14. age 6, Winslow, IL--walking home while consciously considering the ramifications of "graduating" from kindergarten...thinking with awe about what graduating high school would be like...
15. age 6, Rockford, IL--spending six months mostly at the hospital as my twin sisters were born...my mom almost died of toxemia...my sisters were born eight weeks prematurely at less than two pounds...and had pneumonia in ICU for months...building a twelve-foot-tall, elaborate tower from blocks in the waiting room over a four month period...then videotaping its demolition (my first video)...

what a thing it is to be a child...