just think

I was just sitting here, listening to my roommate talk about her sister, who's recently married. It made this connection with something that came to mind this past Sunday -- I was teaching Sunday School, and we were talking about Adam and Eve and the Fall, in the context of pain/struggling and how we process those experiences. At a certain point, I just became amazed again at how things must have been before "the big oops" -- Adam and Eve had total communion with God, were innocent, and lived in perfect union with each other.
My roommate was saying how her sister loves being married, how it's so much better being able to be together all the time. It just brought to mind -- how amazing is it that Paul talks about the church being the Bride of Christ. How sad it is that such an incomprehensible existence, the kind Adam and Eve got a taste of, was broken -- how heartbreaking that must have been, to have been the ones who knew what they had and lost it. It makes so much sense -- the same way that a girl longs to finally be married, to finally be with her husband, in that same way we as Christians spend our days on earth with the underlying longing for our true Husband --
and yet how full of grace God is, that we are able to experience His transforming power on earth and, one day, complete restoration & redemption and new home.
*sigh*

just when wondering sets in. . .

. . . and you feel like you've been rocked from all angles. Just when you are hanging on by a thread, white-knuckled with stubborn belief in God's goodness yet feeling the full-blown effects of the spiritual battle all around you. Just when you feel most alone, and you are hoping for a breath of fresh air, for any encouragement, yet you know faith goes beyond these comforts.

It's right at that moment when you are sitting in a staff meeting, sleepy-eyed and emotionally drained from the previous week (maybe even the weekend), expecting nothing but the order of the day -- this is when you knocked off balance by the specificity of the Holy Spirit, ever-present and ever-working. Your eyes fall on a seemingly random calendar brought in out of the blue by a pastor on staff, which happened to be left sitting right in front of where you're sitting, minding your own business. Until you happen to actually read what's on the cover of this sort of cheesy-looking publication you'd otherwise dismiss -- and your eyes begin to tear up as you read a verse from the Bible that might as well have been written for you, even though it was and it wasn't, and you hope you can keep it together during the meeting, but this time because you're so overwhelmed by love, by the knowledge of being fully known by someone, the reassurance of never having been abandoned, not ever, for even one moment.

True story. And the verse? Here it is:

Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the LORD is finished.
1 Chronicles 28:20