doggedly plowing ahead

For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past. Psalm 90:3

In that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious.  Isaiah 4:2

Yesterday, when it is past, is really absolutely the faintest of shadows.  Pause, think about it.  A tiny fuzz of a memory of a speed set ( four one hundreds, four fifties, four twenty-fives, three times through) at the pool, a blur of phone calls and letters at work, giving blood at the Red Cross ... ah yes, running into a woman, “Do I know you? ... You taught my children,” and out popped their names after nine years ... and who they were in the seventh grade Tom Sawyer play ... I was impressed with my old brain ... and then, calzones with Alan and Fred and ... there you have it.  

A thousand years.  

And if that is really the true perspective of life as we know it, and actually, how we don’t know it, the true side of it all, then indeed our struggles and sufferings can indeed be considered all joy.  They indeed are just a quick jerk of a rotten tooth before a beautiful and glorious eternity.  ... knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.  

It really does make sense, then to focus on what is eternal.  What will last.  And not worry so much about parking spots.  And lamp shades.  And what to eat and what to wear.  

And what we feel.  But what is true.  

That is really difficult in this age of instant gratification.  Fred has shin splint pain, and I can google the answer to his problem in a matter of seconds.  That was an awful lot of lottery tickets purchased.  And didn’t that guy just sell his app for one billion dollars?  We do not have much endurance, but live from disappointment to disappointment.  Things just don’t work out how we hoped with best intentions and we are filled with cheap despair.  My favorite editorial dude addressed this today, sort of.    

And thus, today, I will choose to look to the glorious eternity.  Oddly enough, I suspect the best way to arrive there is five minutes at a time.  The old refugee camp trick.  Because this is not my home.  I can do anything for five minutes.  I can live with hope and joy and grace for five minutes.  And then another five minutes.  And another.  

And that is true.