An Invitation to the Edge

One day there will be more life than we can live in a day. The life in that day will be so permanent and nonfading that we will we never find ourselves lying in bed exhausted and squeezed out with worry and wishing. There and then, the day will go on and the night will not encroach on the goodness of living.

Imagine you are standing at the edge of that day. Behind you is murky nighttime with dimness of sight and coldness of unknowing. Before you, warm on your face, is the dawning sun breezing across your skin and filling you with wisdom and rightness and courage.

I think this is where Jesus lived (and lives). He was (and is) the man in the middle, the bridge between eternity and the temporary life. I think when he felt the cold of the night, he went off to see his Father and take in a long breath of sun-soaked air, to remember what home feels like, to talk with someone who knows and understands him, to see by the light of the most real reality, to think in line with the truest truth. When He turned around to address His followers, He glowed with invisible hope.

Jesus went and still goes before us in all things, from wrestling the slimy devil to lying down exhausted at night, and He goes before us in this too. We can walk in His tracks to the places where heaven intersects with earth. We can walk with Him in the nighttime with our faces turned toward the dawn.

Let us seek out the forward memory, the knowing of the unknown, the invisible light of hope. Set your minds on things above—i.e., turn your face to the light of heaven and see how different things look. How grasshopperish everybody is, how ephemeral and secondary the world’s great events turn out to be. How empty the wooden accomplishments that are measured by numbers and money.

Yet in this dawn, how cherished and shining are the moments of true living: holding the weight of a drowsing child or hearing the words of Jesus read in a second language. How they gleam in the light of the Father, those honest questions, those true confessions, those brazen moments of nonconformity. God knows what you’ve seen—where you’ve noticed the light of heaven and the warmth of truth.

Brothers and Sisters, Mothers and Fathers, there is a day coming and a light shining, and we can be there now because we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places. How unwise we are to try to see without His light, to borrow observations from others or from the last time this thing happened. It is unwise to use the light of Earth—incandescent shadows—to judge eternal worth.

Today, the dawn is burning and we are welcome to bathe our faces in this marvelous light.

I’m tempted now to list off the how-tos, so that these thoughts are more than morning vapor. But surely the paths to the intersection of heaven and earth are as personal and circuitous as our fingerprints.

Sources noted for appreciation and as suggestion for further meditation: Psalm 23:3–4; Isaiah 40; Matthew 17:1–7; 1 Corinthians 13:12; Ephesians 2:6; Colossians 1:1–4; Revelation 21:1–7, 21:22–22:4; “The Sower’s Song” by Andrew Peterson.

-Written by Allie Boman, an alumna from the Eastern Michigan University Chi Alpha group