Weddings are interesting.
I just got back from my cousin's wedding. As I was trying to prepare a speech for the dinner rehearsal I got to thinking about what a wedding was really about. I talked to my sister and she was all, "Weddings are so weird, they are like funerals, everyone just talks about the past like it's the good old days, like you'll never talk to the couple again" I thought that was so true. In fact, weddings aren't quite like a funeral as far as devastation goes and mourning. But they are very much like massive going away parties.
Everyone cries. The family feels a loss. They reminisce over happy memories and brace themselves for the future. It's funny because it's not like the couple is moving over seas to Africa or leaving to Iceland. They actually might end up on your street as your neighbor, though you will never step foot on their yard till approxiamately 2 months later and only before 6pm. What a strange un-spoken rule!
But I get it. When my sisters get married, maybe I'll cry. My sister will probably go off to Africa in reality. But when I left for college, I left my sisters and I cried about that. When they get married I might cry from relief that they married well and are happy. I don't think I'll cry cause it's over or because it's me saying good-bye.
People joke about weddings being the beginning of life or the end. It's either a death sentence or a life sentence. A new birth or the end of a journey. While it's mixture of both, the wedding is certainly not solely the beginning or the end of life as we know it.
I have been considering Jesus and his talk of marriage and weddings in the New Testament. I have come to the conclusion that a wedding any day is stronger than a funeral. Why? Because what we gain is more than what we lose in the end. I don't know if this makes sense but maybe a wedding is not the starting line of a race or the finishing line, maybe it is the journey. The marriage is the journey. When I get to heaven and meet Jesus face to face I'll think I'll realize this. Because after all when you enter into eternity, there is no beginnings and endings. There is no start or finish. It just IS.
You can say good-bye to the going-away parties we throw all the time. :-)
Monday, June 28, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
The genre of life
A person's life is much too complicated to write a mere novel. One's life has multiple plots, sub-plots, and too many characters altogether and a wide variety of genres. This is not a feature film we are living. I was watching Garfield on TV this morning and he said, “My biggest stress is whether or not I'll make on time to my afternoon nap, from my morning nap.” That made the show apparently. There are of course other shows on other things, The Office, humor, The Bachelor, bursting at the seams with drama, Prison Break, action, LOST, mystery and some sci-fi thrown in and don't forget all the soaps!
They solely focus around one genre, that is how they market. Our lives aren't so easy. Our lives are not about one thing. They are about everything. Even the shows that throw in a little mix of romance and suspense they still only have one job, one best-friend, one boyfriend, and one terrorist attack. Not 5 jobs, 10 best friends, 6.5 stalkers and long days and long nights were nothing is actually happening.
That's the irony, one minute life is romantic, suspenseful, action packed and humorous, the next it is so boring and so dull you hope the only one watching is the little girl you nanny for cause at least she appears entertained.Is God even amused? Somehow we'll watch Garfield nap but cringe upon moments in our lives that no longer are about everything. In fact they appear to be about essentially nothing.
Is God the author? Is He the script writer or am I? And if He is, how come nothing is happening?!? On the other hand if He is the director of this show, a director will never drag an audience through a character's minute by minute job search for two months. A direction will never have a camera crew watch some sob story second by second of a girl's repeated break up with the same man 3 times. Or for that matter, a nanny's hour by hour , 'wow', 'good job', 'truck', 'bottle' job. Seems God watches these kind of things, ever so closely. Maybe God is the audience, surprisingly.
What is God looking for? What exactly is the plot? Is there a happy ending or is it a dark comedy? Does God hover over my life ever so gracefully but shockingly strong with creature like wings. God hovering over my life of chaos, the work of the sculpture's hands, the author's mind.
Intrigued I catch a glimpse of His eye. A twinkle in His eye, He winks. Caught off guard I swallow the lump in my throat. He does know what this story is about. Stumbling through a foggy blackness I trip over a match involuntarily lit by an orange glow. Perhaps what I say is true, Life is about everything, and the yet the dichotomy..it is also about just one thing...
They solely focus around one genre, that is how they market. Our lives aren't so easy. Our lives are not about one thing. They are about everything. Even the shows that throw in a little mix of romance and suspense they still only have one job, one best-friend, one boyfriend, and one terrorist attack. Not 5 jobs, 10 best friends, 6.5 stalkers and long days and long nights were nothing is actually happening.
That's the irony, one minute life is romantic, suspenseful, action packed and humorous, the next it is so boring and so dull you hope the only one watching is the little girl you nanny for cause at least she appears entertained.Is God even amused? Somehow we'll watch Garfield nap but cringe upon moments in our lives that no longer are about everything. In fact they appear to be about essentially nothing.
Is God the author? Is He the script writer or am I? And if He is, how come nothing is happening?!? On the other hand if He is the director of this show, a director will never drag an audience through a character's minute by minute job search for two months. A direction will never have a camera crew watch some sob story second by second of a girl's repeated break up with the same man 3 times. Or for that matter, a nanny's hour by hour , 'wow', 'good job', 'truck', 'bottle' job. Seems God watches these kind of things, ever so closely. Maybe God is the audience, surprisingly.
What is God looking for? What exactly is the plot? Is there a happy ending or is it a dark comedy? Does God hover over my life ever so gracefully but shockingly strong with creature like wings. God hovering over my life of chaos, the work of the sculpture's hands, the author's mind.
Intrigued I catch a glimpse of His eye. A twinkle in His eye, He winks. Caught off guard I swallow the lump in my throat. He does know what this story is about. Stumbling through a foggy blackness I trip over a match involuntarily lit by an orange glow. Perhaps what I say is true, Life is about everything, and the yet the dichotomy..it is also about just one thing...
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