I remember growing up in the big wide, open spaces of our farm and wondering what fascination in life lay before me. All around me seemed to speak of goodness and purity and hope for my ideals. I’ve heard it said that big dreams come easy in the dark and stillness of night, but for me, big dreams came with the sunshine shining on all of life, under the covering of a shimmering, azure sky. I remember looking through my crayon box to find a name for that glorious color of blue that seems to invite you to heaven itself. When I found it, I’d never heard of such a word, ‘azure’, but even now, just to let it slide quietly off my lips conjures up all the notions I ever dreamed under its inspiration.
I believe God allowed me to live in that simplicity of life – carrying my ideals as truths and always allowing the beauty of His creation to occupy my mind – so that I would have the foundation of the undeniable existence of heaven, when I came face-to-face with the reality of hell.
I didn’t stay on the farm. As the skies kept changing, so did I and I chose to seek my way in the world. Carrying every high hope a youth could carry upon my shoulders for all to see, I touted the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal! Dust thou art to dust returneth was not spoken of the soul!” What was it that Life was going to reveal to me? Where would I find the Truth of my dreams? The anticipation I held was overwhelming – and my enthusiasm was contagious – that is, until someone translated it into naïve vulnerability.
One by heartwrenching one, those high hopes I had carried were ripped from that pack upon my shoulders and replaced with much heavier things: disillusionment, loss of self-worth and identity, fear, anger, mistrust and even hatred. When my feet could no longer move forward under the weight of these burdens, when I could not raise my head beyond all the guilt and shame that bound this new pack upon my shoulders – when I could not even recall that I ever knew the word ‘azure’, there came from the depths of my spirit, from that overgrown foundation of unquenchable life, a cry. A cry to the One Who created that life. One I had only known in the beauty of my childhood and had quite forgotten. One Who had been waiting for me, patiently, to recognize Him as One Who far exceeds the beauty in the color of the sky.
Thus with that one cry, on the brink of death, I enabled the angels in heaven to rejoice in a victory over the author of death. I enabled Jesus to do what He wanted to do all along, but what I never would have understood prior to the pain. I will never forget what it is like to look death squarely in the face. I mean spiritual death – the kind of death where your heart stops beating even though it’s still hard at work. The kind of death where you stop seeing with your eyes wide open, where your feet move and you go nowhere and the work of your hands is always a work of frustration.
Thanks be to God Who always gives us the victory in Jesus Christ! All that I lost from my original pack was restored to me as I laid down the terrible weight of the second pack at the cross. “Come unto Me you who are heavily laden, “ is what Jesus calls, “I will give you rest!” What blessed words to a tormented soul!
But salvation is just the beginning. Another of the splendors of life on the farm is the ability to see things come full circle. A baby bird hatches and returns the following year to teach its own to fly, a seed begets a flower, which drops of its bounty to beget yet more, a leaf falls to the ground and nourishes life, the examples are endless. Salvation surely means we shall see God, yet its purpose, its aim, in stride with Longfellow’s claim is not the grave, despite the promises we now hold for the hereafter.
No, salvation’s purpose is in the land of fruitful living. “I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly!” What greater harvest, what greater completion of a holy circle can there be, than to sow in tears and reap in joy? To lead another into the land of the living from the doorstep of death in the spirit and become a progenitor of generations who will call upon the name of the Lord? Without a vision, the people will surely perish – let us gain a vision, claim the hope and establish the dream of a world where every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
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