I had a long talk with my dad today. I listened while he told me his view of the universe, the solar system and the stars in the galaxy. I remember growing up in the country, warm summer nights, crickets humming, laying side by side on lounge chairs– tilted back, gazing at the wonder of the twinkling stars. He was a believer. A believer of the wonders of God’s creation, its vastness and the many things we had yet to learn about how God created it all.
“Do you see the Big Dipper?” 40 years later, his cracking voice through telephone lines says, “these kinds of things aren’t for small thinkers“… as he continues teaching me to live in wonder.
I tell him that I am glad that the winter has been extreme because it will kill off the insects, like mosquitoes and ticks. “But everything… every creature God put here has a purpose”, he says. He goes on to tell me about the circle of life. Before we hang up, he tells me he is not sure about the answers to all of life’s mysteries but that when he gets to heaven he will “send me a message…because it will all make sense then.” “Promise?” I ask. “Promise.”
The last time I visited, we spent hours going through old photographs of the life he and my mother have shared for 60 years. Yellowed with age, fragments of lives well lived. Births and deaths, babies and teenagers, gatherings, ponies, puppies, summers at the lake, photographs chronicling their lives.
Photographs of my parents holding hands, holding on…not knowing what the future held, not knowing that one day they would be old together and hold each other up and burn pancakes on the stove because they turned on too many burners …
Not knowing that one day my mother would fall and lay there for hours with the bones in her leg broken in two, calling out for help because she had slipped out of bed…
Not knowing that my fathers hands would shake so much that my mother would help him eat on the days it was too bad.
Some years were rocky. Life is just that way sometimes. We all face hardships. Life is a balancing act of sorts… making mistakes, learning and rearranging. We never quite get it right but then… it was never meant to be just right… or there would be no mystery.
Life, purpose, meaning, wisdom, wonder… these kinds of things aren’t for small thinkers. To live a life full of purpose, we must believe… we must have hope through the rocky years and know that we might not understand everything until we get to heaven.
1 John 3:2
Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.
Ask God to help you live a life exploding with purpose.
Know that your purpose isn’t for small thinkers…
God’s plan for you is greater than you can imagine.
Mary, our experiences together have been so special to me! I love that you treasure each moment. I so tend to rush through each day with hardly any time spent, in prayer or thought.