Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Fighting the Boogey Man

Whenever Rod and I rent a movie, we always watch the previews - makes us feel more like we're at the movies.  Last night, we saw a preview for Black Swan, some creepy suspense movie about a ballet dancer who's out to get another ballet dancer or seduce her or something like that.  Anyway, I woke up in the middle of the night from a scary-feeling dream, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not get the images from that preview out of my head.  I kept seeing Natalie Portman with red eyes, staring down at a shrivel-y black feather that she had just pulled from her own skin.  And it took FOREVER to get back to sleep.

This afternoon, though, I was driving home from work, and I had just the opposite problem - I tried to remember what about my dream was so scary-feeling, and I tried to imagine the same Natalie Portman face.  But I couldn't.  Or maybe I could, but it didn't seem half as disturbing as it did at 2:30 this morning.

Does that ever happen to you?  Something seems one way in the middle of the night, and then the opposite seems true once you're fully awake?  Whether it's a frightening image you can't get out of your head or a song lyric that sounds really poetic or an idea for a new cooking show that would just be wonderful - sometimes you just cling to an idea all night, and then the sun rises and you realize your once-wonderful idea makes no sense at all.

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about heaven, hell, what happens after people die.  And I can't help but wonder if I am living in the middle of the night right now.  If the ideas that seem so clear, or the fears that seem so real will just sort of fade away when I finally wake up - when I die.  C.S. Lewis writes about heaven not as some spirt-y, dream-like place, but as a place where we will be more aware, more real, more us than we are right now.  He says the questions that we have, like "Does God know the future" and "Why does praying for healing sometimes work and sometimes not", will not be answered - they will just make no sense.  Like asking, "How heavy is yellow?" 

I like that. 

I like thinking that the doctrinal disagreements we might have or the confusions we might be stuck in are just a symptom of our not-fully-awake-ness.  And that when we are bathing in the glory of God, when His Spirit surrounds us like morning sunshine, all of the scary shapes and shadows will go away, and we will finally be able to see.

"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."
{1 Corinthians 13:12}

No comments:

Post a Comment