Both/and
I was spinning through all the motions of the usual morning bustle. Brew the coffee. Make the breakfast. Pause the Bible reading while another kid scampers off to the bathroom. Clear the dishes. Find the shoe. Remind the boys to comb their hair and grab their backpacks. Disappoint the toddler who is asking for a snack—right after breakfast. Chat on the drive across town. Turn the corner to arrive at school. Exhale.
That’s the way of things, I suppose. Mornings with young children must be harried. Just as the moon only comes out at night. Just as it’s always gray and cloudy during a rainstorm. Just as the leaves change color then fall to the ground every autumn. That’s just the way the world works.
But on this day, as I pulled in front of the school on my seventh of ten visits that week to the school drop off/pick up lane, I was startled—delighted!—to see the nocturnal moon hovering over the mountains in the light of morning—big and faint and beautiful and astonishing against the clear and bright Colorado sky.
Look up. Somewhere, maybe right in front of you, right where you are, something peculiar is happening. It’s pouring rain while the sun somehow is breaking in through the clouds, making the fast-falling drops look like a curtain of diamonds all around. The stalwart evergreens remain unchanged as golden and red leaves pile up around them, offering their verdancy even in the dead of winter.
Can you hear it?
Creation is testifying that this cut-and-dried “way that it is” is not the whole story. That everything we’ve deemed “opposite” and “mismatched” is coming together in a place just beyond our vision, reverberating with strains of goodness and wonder that we can perceive if we allow the Spirit to tune our hearts to it. The earth that was made by the God who is both Alpha and Omega, King and Sacrifice, Lion and Lamb, cannot help but echo this reality.
Daylight and moonlight.
Rain and sunshine.
Winter and green growth.
Sorrow and joy.
Longing and gratitude.
Grief and hope.
On the day I said my final “I love you” to my grandmother until that day we are reunited in the presence of Jesus, we received a card in the mail. My breath caught as I recognized her perfect flowing penmanship. Though her sickness limited her in many ways, she was faithful to send a card for every birthday, holiday, and celebration of any kind. I imagine she has written hundreds (thousands?) of cards to her loved ones over the years.
This one was addressed to Matt, but I opened it myself with trembling fingers. In it was a message in celebration of his first book that was releasing into the world that same day. I ran my fingers over her written message, as I realized with wonder and gratitude and profound sadness that this was the last card we would ever receive from her, and more—the last card she ever wrote.
I flipped back to the front of the card. In gold letters it read, “This is just the beginning.” She passed away the next day.
Beginnings and endings.
Life and death.
The ancients were not afraid to tell the truth about death. They identify death as the insidious unwelcome guest of God’s perfect creation, and yet held the triumphant belief that death was merely a door into life for those who belong to the resurrected Christ, and that one day it would be defeated forever.
The seeming contradictions of life and death are brought together and transformed in the scarred hands of Jesus, the same hands that neatly folded and laid aside his grave clothes before he burst forth from the tomb in resurrection life.
In this world we live in the tension of these astonishing, agonizing pairings. Holding joy and sadness, loss and hope in the same breath is our constant reality, even as we believe that sorrow, tears, and grief will give way to joy, laughter, and restoration of the years the locusts have eaten. It will not always be so.
Yet the hope of the New Creation is not that we’ll be free from the co-existence of all that seems perplexingly opposite. When heaven and earth are joined at last, and all is made well, there will still be then—just as there is now—
Mystery and assurance.
Newness and eternity.
Smallness and belovedness.
But in the full light of Morning, holding these things together that right now seem to be an unreasonable pairing will no longer fill us with soul-rending tension, but instead will fill our hearts with a sense of possibility, glory, and peace. And with renewed sight, we’ll behold the One, both fully human and fully divine, that was there holding them together all along.