A Mirror Dimly

I've heard there's a hole in the ozone layer south of New Zealand and unprepared visitors to that island become quickly burned by the solar intensity.  This thin sky phenomenon creates a captivating metaphor --because I have seen an opening some days ...to a realm beyond the material.  Closing quickly, or vanishing behind clouds, it is only enough to entice, never a portion big enough for satiation. 

When the world splits a little I feel the echo of eternity and by that faint drumbeat each relationship and task reverberates within the fulness of its setting.  The glimpse can come through a Sunday morning or an evening reading or the stillness within reflection.  Fleeting as a flash of light, it is the closest I get to seeing the thread that connects me to the One that made all things and made me.

At those moments everything strains to grasp at the vanishing dimension because I know there is so much more.  I want to remain knowing and wanting so much more.  The rote duties of my day-to-day are sacred because they are the tasks entrusted to me.  But they are not the goal.  My significance is great in the context of my smallness.  My worries, heartaches and sorrows are relegated to their proper places when I comprehend they are "light, momentary afflictions".  I am as Elisha's servant permitted at times to see the armies of the Lord ringing the battlefield upon which I seem outnumbered.  

"Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away...
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known."


As human skin is too frail to withstand prolonged unobstructed exposure to the sun, perhaps my soul clothed in mortality can only survive small glimpses.  Still, while I cannot live chasing those moments of brilliance, I endeavor to carry a measure of their remembered glory into the filtered days.