"Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!" -Isaiah 43:18-19
It's a funny thing to look back through old things. Over Thanksgiving break I helped my mom go through old drawers of pictures from our childhood. And let me just say, there were some classics! Especially of Thomas (who somehow seems to overshadow me in everything, even 20 years later!)
I've started reading through the first couple of entries in this blog, and it reminded me that I started writing right after a breakup four and a half years ago. It's funny in a lot of ways to look back over them to see the ways that what I was writing was so rooted in that experience. If you read my blog back then, you'd assume I was a moody twenty-two year old (hint: I was.) I needed an outlet for the stuff going on trapped in my brain, so I started writing a blog. It was a snapshot of my life at the time.
When the 2012 London Olympics were going on, there were pictures circulating on the internet of divers' faces as they were falling towards the pool. Long story short, the faces they made were INCREDIBLE. Don't believe me or don't remember them...?
Don't even try to tell me that's not hilarious! Apparently, divers (even the best ones in the world) have to contort their faces in all of the spinning and twirling they do. The torque is just too extreme. It looks absolutely ridiculous when you take a split-second snapshot of their descent.
But when you step back from the pictures you get to watch their full dives. Yes, the faces happened, and it made for great memes for a week. But to focus on the single moment instead of admiring the beauty of their diving misses the point completely. Those faces were only a part of something much more significant.
Maybe that's why it's so fun to go through old middle school pictures. EVERYONE had a weird face once upon a time (and if you don't think you did, just let friends go through all your yearbook pictures. They'll find one.) We can look through the old scrapbooks and photo albums because we're not there anymore. We've graduated from those days. But way too often, we get stuck in one moment. We find ourselves defined by instances.
Maybe you made a mistake once that had grave consequences and you can't seem to find it in yourself to forgive yourself. Maybe you've suffered the end of a relationship and you don't think your heart will ever mend. Maybe you got stuck in a rough situation and you can't imagine loving yourself again, let alone imagining that anyone else could possibly love you.
Or maybe you won the proverbial lottery and you've been living on that high ever since. Maybe you peaked in high school and you're still living the glory of those memories. Maybe you got a promotion and want to remind all of your colleagues at every turn.
These are moments. They are chapters. But stories contain more than one chapter. No story worth telling dwells on one moment. It follows the ups and downs, the choices and the consequences, the tragedy and the joy.
If someone took a picture of you while your first (or second, or any other) child was born, I imagine they'd see unrestrained joy. If someone saw a glimpse of you after your first encounter with heartbreak, they may see utter despair. If someone saw a newspaper heading after you won the big race, they may think you were a champion. And if they heard what people were saying about you only after your biggest mistake, they'd probably want nothing to do with you.
But these are merely moments in a much bigger story. That is the story of God, a god who is constantly recreating things, taking what was old and making something new. The bible is full of things not being how they are supposed to be and God taking those broken things and making something new and beautiful out of them. And often, when things start going so well that people become full of themselves, something happens to bring us back down to earth.
But God is narrating a beautiful story with our lives. And luckily, those stories are not defined by individual moments, but rather the weaving of those many strands into a single narrative. And in the lowest of lows, we are not defined by our failure or rejection. And in the highest of highs, we are not defined by our joys and celebrations. We are defined as the beloved of God, and every moment of our stories helps identify us as we are and in what we are becoming.
Moments of pain are ugly. And moments of triumph are glorious. And moments of blah are just kind of... blah. But they are merely moments, photos in a much larger album. Our lives are a collection of moments, none with the power to determine the people we are. That's the story God is telling with our lives, because in every moment, God is taking an old thing and making it new. And in every moment, God is holding us near, whispering, "You are my beloved."
So may you see God's fingerprints in every photo of your life. May you see God's making something new in your deepest despair and in your loudest celebration. And may you know that in the midst of every moment God is surrounding us in the gentle embrace of a loving parent.
forever unfinished...
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