A PRACTICE IN NOTICING

Someone told me that although we are not of this world and that the world in this present form is passing away, we are not to shun what is temporal, but to practice to notice what the temporal teaches us about the eternal.

Not to boast, but well, actually, that’s what I’ve always been doing! Perhaps not hard or frequent enough, but definitely no one can contest that I have always been a person in search of parallels.

Jesus was always one to portray the eternal through the ordinary and temporal. Think parables. Likewise too, the prophets – think metaphors. Paul...well Paul, does it to an extent, but not very much. Frankly, I think he has an underdeveloped right brain. Or rather perhaps because his readers, the Greeks, were not people that would appreciate such things.

So...today I was watching a Walt Disney animation, Dinosaur. Obviously, a story about dinosaurs. What can a story about dinosaurs teach us about the eternal? Seems quite farfetched, no relation whatsoever. Yet, it was a story that had many truths. A herd of dinosaurs were travelling through the desert to their nesting grounds. The conditions are harsh, water sparse, and worse still, they had to avoid predators – the flesh eating T-rexes. Woe to the dinosaur that doesn’t keep apace with the herd! A dinosaur separated from the herd is a dead dinosaur. But yet, because they stuck together and stuck-up for each other, they made it at last to the nesting grounds, T-rexes or not. It reminds me of our journey here as pilgrims, looking forward to our heavenly home. The journey is hard, and the forces of evil are real, but yet if we uphold each other and keep going together, we’ll make it. Especially since unlike in the story, we have a Leader who is perfect, has gone before us and is the Rock that gives us water.

Also today, I was knitting my scarf. Somehow, I come to appreciate how God feels when He made us, fearfully and wonderfully. How every stitch is important, and how proud one is of one’s creation when it is completed. Also how precious we His creation are to Him, and lastly, that we were made for a purpose...in a way too, to warm not necks, but hearts, especially that of the Maker.

So yeah, if one looks hard enough, one can usually find the eternal in the temporal.

Someone can please tell me what can we learn from arrhythmias about eternity? The only thing I’ve learnt so far is that like arrhythmias, we can never fully comprehend eternity. It is much too....complicated. But still we must prepare for them! :D