God's fireworks

“March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout, then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in.” Joshua 6:3-5 NIV

It’s Independence Day. Like most people we spent a good part of the day blowing up money. My kids all seem to have a little pyromaniac in them. My son really likes rockets and man I am glad those did not exist when we were kids. Of course, we also had M-80’s that used to be a portion of a stick of dynamite and we used to have shootouts with Roman candles and Bottle Rockets, which we fired out of glass bottles, hence their name.

We went to watch fireworks tonight. Our town spends thousands of dollars on this show, and it is cool. However, God upstaged it this year, for free. In the background, a good old fashioned Kansas thunderstorm was passing through. So we got flashes of lightning all the way through the show. Man cannot compete with divine pyrotechnics.

It was raining so we sat in the car. My son sat next to me and I could not take my eyes off of him. I write about him a lot, but the lessons I am learning keep coming. When he was young, like around age 4 or 5, a fireworks display was just not an option. It took years to get him to even watch from inside the house. His sisters danced around in the street blowing things up but at one point you could not have shoved him out the door. We gradually saw him progress to watching from the door, to opening the door, to standing outside. That process took years. Tonight, he watched at complete ease and I am marveled by it.

If you had told me when he was three years old that I could watch him light his own rockets all day, I would have taken the bet completely convinced that he would never do such a thing. I have known about autism for 16 years and that sounds like a long time, but is it?

One of the things that amazes me is that in heaven we will not be bound by time. There will no longer be a need for it. So once there I will not be sitting around for eternity wondering how to best spend my time. I will just get to “be”.

I think this concept has a spot in my mind because I think about the time that will pass here before I get to see Jordy again. When I hit the gates of heaven, that wait will be over. However, I have this odd conversation with myself that for her it will not have felt like a wait. She is already there and is accordingly no longer subject to a dimension of time. So, when we hug again it will, in effect, be instant for her.

I know it is a sort of strange thing to think about, but as I get older I have noticed that I think about my life as already including the destination I have not yet reached. If the grace I received from faith in Jesus Christ saved me then, it also saves me now. But it also saves me when my “then” arrives in the future, all at the same time.

So why do I wait to enjoy it? It’s already here and is in the future simultaneously. I think I spend too much time waiting for perfection to arrive when I am swimming in unmerited favor every single second of my life – right now. But God has His own reasons for making us wait. Why did Joshua’s army have to march for seven days. God did not need the time to warm up. Maybe Joshua needed the time for obedience and to align properly. Maybe Korbins life is my wall and God wants me to be obedient so that I am properly aligned with the idea that God is God, and I am not. Maybe Jordyn not being here is part of my march too.

What am I waiting for? Is there something you are waiting for?

Why do I try to ask the Creator of time to operate it by my calendar?

Challenge: When I get it and am aligned properly, I realize that my eternity has already started. He has already told me that I will eventually get to go straight in. I don’t have to wait, I just have to march until He knocks the wall down.

Rick Claiborn