Highest of highs

“Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressive and glorious joy.” 1 Peter 1:8 NIV

This past weekend I watched as my daughter and son-in-law officially started their marriage. I wrote last week about walking her down the aisle and what I would say. Turns out it was simple, “Her mom and dad, sister and brother, the whole gang.” The life they will weave together will be a spectacular thing to watch.

The entire day was about as perfect as it could get. Except it was HOT. In an area surrounded by big trees, it turns out that at 2:00 PM the sun was directly overhead. Some people moved over to the trees for shelter, but in the chairs, it was pretty intense. Did I mention I was in a black tuxedo?

I will remember many things about the day. Among them how spectacular Aly looked. Stunning is not a good enough word. We had a first look before the ceremony. What I turned around to see was my little girl, the Nimrod, looking like someone’s dream. Logan was not in on that moment. His first look was while I was walking next to her. It was special. He has an appreciation for life that is beyond his years.

That entire day was a milestone for us. My family has been through the lowest of lows. As spectacular as I have seen Aly become, Jordyn was too. Losing her and the struggles that causes has been tough. But leading up to the wedding I realized that we were in a streak of probably the longest amount of time where we felt joy, had zero worry and we allowed nothing to come into view that did not celebrate. We were both asked numerous times if we were just ready to get it over with. No! We enjoyed every second. My question is this: why don’t we do that more often?

The heat we felt that day was intense. But it was weak compared to the source. The difference in measure is unimaginable. We can hear the temperature of the sun, which is around 27 million degrees (I looked it up), but our mind has no way of grasping it. From freezing to boiling we can handle. But the full spectrum of what is possible – too big to relate to.

What my entire family has felt these past few weeks has been uninterrupted joy too big to explain. It is the most I have felt in my lifetime. Saturday was the singular best day of my life. But there is more coming. Perspective is a beautiful thing. I have spent too many days balancing what I think of as reality without remembering that I am unable to comprehend the actual source of everything good in my life: God.

He has an even bigger supply than either you or I can imagine. In the last few weeks, I have been able to cast off fear, worry, obligation, time, money, work, details, self-consciousness and literally everything else that was either neutral or negative. I realized that I have seen my family go full circle, from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs.

What we have waiting in eternity we cannot yet see. We can imagine, but our minds are not enough to comprehend the hand of the One who made us. If I relate to heaven in that context it changes how I dream. I can move from trying to figure out the answer to a lot of unanswerable issues to anticipation of perfection. I cannot reach it or create it here other than in glimpses. But all of the time I spend trying to create it here actually can be the literal distraction from seeing that it already exists. I have also realized this week that the highest of highs feels much sweeter because we have tasted the lowest of low. I have been reminded that if we had perfection here it would actually become ordinary. If that were the case, I would not search for it so ironically; I would not find it. I would only come to expect it. I would not thank God for it enough. What we found this last week, I will thank Him for the rest of my life.

What has occupied your thoughts the most in the last few weeks? What were you worried about two years ago?

Will any of those things matter in two weeks? Two months? Two years? More often than not, the answer is no.

Challenge: We are to be good stewards of what we have been given and sometimes that means work. However, why do we go beyond that work to allow so many distractions that we miss seeing the things we are actually working for already exist?

Rick Claiborn