The most practical and perceptive persons in the world are well aware of the temporary context of virtually everything in nature, and especially meaningful for all that touches their lives. The temporary factor touches rocks that erode, no matter how hard the granite. Even the magnificent Mount Rushmore faces formed by the visionary artist, Borglum, when I was young, had to be repaired a few years ago to counter erosion, especially the cracks that were threatening the refinement of the great sculpture. More than sixty years ago, a forensic student of mine gave a reading of the centuries-old Great Stone Face of New England, a story that cemented itself in my mind. The natural formation fell and disappeared a few years ago proving again the force of gravity, and the temporary factor of nature – and life. It is a factor that we summarize in the process leading to decline to disappearance – perhaps death. Everything seems to die. Marriages may die, even cultures. We tend to pass over the process, sometimes by calling it change.
There are many forces that cause the march of change on our lives and surroundings that make a difference. Those differences may become so great that some persons end their lives rather than follow meandering trails to unclear conclusions. One of the great gifts of faith is the belief that the erosion of all things leads to the natural conclusion we may call change or death, but that in the pattern of our interests, the conclusion of the temporary is transition to the permanent migrations of life. It may be that the end of life in the womb that gave transition to life in nature will be followed to the end of life in nature for the life of immortality in an entirely different context and form than we could ever imagine from nature’s information. One wonders if, when the new environment (heavenly) has achieved its purpose there may be another beyond that – perceived as still another transition. The possibilities of our imaginations can be intriguing. Because we may believe that God is progressive and creative, when would he choose to stop creativity? Eternity, not subject to time, rolls along not as separate photographs, but in a rolling scenario of life that includes gains and losses. One of the magnificent features of Christian life is the ability to live through both benefits and losses with a sense of victory and life venture to ultimate awards for faithfulness to the affirmations, and the evasion of the negatives that we identify as evils. Some evils, perhaps in the majority of appearances do not appear to be evil. The rain that nourishes the earth, but also offers devastating floods, is more valued than the drought that denies life. The Sun gives and takes away at the same time. Life is lived in a complexity of paradox which we seem not to regard in the whole story: changes, cycles, variances, directions, choices and the like. The matter is further complicated in the same influences of an individual living with persons with the same influences, but with significant difference in preferences. The serious analyst may well wonder how we get on at all. Many do not get on – partly in ignorance of how our life thing works, and partly because we may not have the resources to adjust to emergence from a former pattern, to which we have become addicted, to a newer one that may not offer the comforts we have found in the old (former) ways. (This has been demonstrated to the world in the life of Johnny Cash.)
Another problem is that the emerging pattern may not be taken to be as satisfactory as the former. This is especially a matter of concern – in that God never changes. God would not be God if he changed. Who, in right mind, would change perfection – holiness tied to God’s attributes? The fact is that many of our rights become sub-topics to the nature of God. Freedom is in holiness that includes not only freedom but gentleness, virtue, character, love and the like – and all identified as perfect never needing repair or addition. There is a beautiful human statement regarding this understanding – against which there is no law (not overdone). (Galatians 5:23) There is ecstasy in perfection, lasting freedom and no enemy, no opposite, to contend with. We fight for freedom and for defeat of the enemy forces of freedom because our context includes the blessed right forces. We may suffer because we sometimes violate our own definitions of freedom. We may affirm Christ but live carnally. Clear about the power of faith and prayer, we can find our way through the contradictory processes of the world. We can prevail for spiritual victory. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020