In reality, I am sitting at the desk in our office with Spanish texts and Europe Semester notes strewn across it. In my head, I am driving south on I-75 in May, sitting in the back seat of my brother-in-law's truck all cozied up with two baby girls and a dog, watching my sister in the passenger seat laugh and check her iPhone for the nearest Chick-fil-a so I could get my fix as soon as possible upon landing from the West Coast. There is kudzu outside (as well as a tornado-infested storm front heading our way) and good music inside. It's the good music that's taking me back there; that was the weekend I was introduced to the Avett Brothers and The Head and the Heart, catching snatches of lyrics that called to somewhere deep inside ("Darling please come home...")
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| One corner of Mimi's yard |
And so since my brother-in-law is now my music "dealer," it was great this week to see him enthusiastically recommend a new (to me) band--and as I am listening to it now, it is all new, and so lovely, and evocative. It is new and yet I can close my eyes and feel the wind in my hair and see 5 month-old Nutmeg gumming over at her cousin. So it is old and new at the same time, a characteristic which I find is somehow capable of whispering a flavor of what eternity must be like--not a clear picture, but a scent or a snatch of a song of something at once familiar and yet so new. I find these snatches painfully glorious. And they make me mindful:
I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.12 I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live... (Ecclesiastes 3:10-12)
What a mystery eternity is. Who can fathom? And yet, I expect when we find ourselves fully aware of it, it will feel disconcertingly and deliciously like something we've known all along.
Oh, and the band? You could check them out: The Lone Bellow. And may you be joyful and see beautiful things.
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| The first gingerbread house they were allowed to do entirely on their own. |
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| Playing "push" with my stripey twin |
Happy Epiphany,
H
