arms wide open

Do you ever wonder if life is moving faster than you are?

I see small and fleeting glimpses of this phenomenon every once in a while during the daylight hours. I’m cleaning my room and marvel at how insignificant organizing my sock drawer is when there is world-changing to do. I decide to take a nap and the mystique creeps in of what I might miss while I am away. I do not ponder long on these thoughts though, because there are dishes to wash, people to call, places to be.

It is the nighttime that beckons me to wander, behold, question, dance, breathe. It is when the rest of the word, or so I imagine, goes to their beds and drifts off. I am left alone with the universe. Nothing but myself and the soft starry sky, the strong and majestic trunks of trees, the slightest and stillest coolness of the evening air, and I am delighted.

This is when I wonder.

Maybe I really am just a speck of energy in this massive existence. I never want to think about it too much, but sometimes when I stand underneath that great, big sky I just can’t help myself. Really- think about all the other six billion people living on this planet. I find it hard to comprehend the profoundness of the different families on my street interacting, grilling burgers, having fights, all in their own way, all at the same time. Much less everyone who is breathing in and out at the very moment that my fingers tap this keyboard into the still hours of the morning. Then I must take into account that this is one moment in history. Just one. Yesterday, there was a different group of livers and breathers. Tomorrow we will be different again. Generations upon generations have been members of this club we call humanity. And there are generations to come. And…there’s the universe to consider. To me infinite is just another way of saying I’m not smart enough to understand. It’s infinite. Where are we? What are we doing? And who am I in this thing I call “we”?

In the midst of all that, I’m sitting at a kitchen table at 12:13am in early May. I’m writing what are to me profound thoughts…but what does it really matter? What does it really matter that I stop to examine the metaphysical when a Nigerian woman with a baby on her back spends hours in the cassava field? When an east Texan woman falls to the floor after her husband hits her one more time in that cold, hard kitchen. When a homeless girl, barely eighteen, in Birmingham can’t get a job to feed her siblings. What does it really matter?

Are these questions even worth asking? Maybe they are nothing. Maybe they are everything. I really don’t know.

I’m reading a book by Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts, in which he talks about how we rarely ask the why questions because we are so preoccupied with the how. To that girl on the streets, how to get a job is a much more poignant question than why it is she lacks one. When how is a matter of life and death, why ask why? Or maybe why is a matter of life and death also, just in a different sense.

…But if no one ever asks why, can we ever reach the true essence of living? I deeply hope that life is more than how.

As Switchfoot so brilliantly stated:
“Maybe we’ve been living with eyes half open. Maybe we’re bent and broken. Oh, we were meant to live for so much more.”

This is my hope that my wonderings are not in vain. That they are not a waste of time. That there is something to become of them. Even if it is only for me. Which I hope is not the case, because I so desperately desire to reach into the hearts of others and feel their wounds and share their heartbeat. I want what I say to mean something to somebody else, even if it is just one person.

But right now, they’re all asleep. It’s just me and the cosmos, and I think that God—not the one we’ve created in our church bulletins, but the One—has a reason for all of this. Maybe He wants me to ponder the universe because he made it, and well, I haven’t stopped much lately to just be in awe. Maybe he’s revealing Himself to me through the cricket chips and tree sways. Maybe I need to worry less about where I am in it all and just be.

Maybe I need to wonder and wander because if I didn’t, I would miss life altogether.

Maybe life isn’t moving faster than me, and maybe it is. I don’t really know, but I did read that:
“Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (II Corinthians 4:16-18)

Much like a parent can never raise the perfect child no matter how much they love them, how hard they strive to shelter them, or how much they teach them, I cannot fix this whole messed up world. I know this sounds obvious and simple, but it’s kind of a big deal for me. Maybe I just need to live. Stand in awe of the nightfall and grasp onto opportunities that arise to help this world, engage in this world.

I think that maybe when I strut off on my valiant attempts to help the world God has bigger purposes for impacting me than impacting them. Maybe when I have these thoughts He really is just getting to me, this tiny speck of energy in all that is life.

I’m not really sure how fast life is moving, and I’m not really sure how fast I am moving. But I’m not going to “hold on” as some would say. I’m going to stretch out my arms wide open and try to take in every last ounce I can. Right now, that might be the only thing I know how to do.