Today is Dad's birthday; he would have turned 63 years old. There were apple fritters on the breakfast table. Yesterday the text of the Transfiguration, from Matthew's account, was the basis of our sermon. I am paying attention. I don't claim to have any original, profound thoughts on the topic, but I find myself under the umbrella of this greater story and want to have open eyes.
I do not think that the disciples were expecting to see Jesus in his glory when they went up the mountain to pray with him that day. Surely, praying with their master was a regular rhythm of their lives, a spiritual discipline and habit. Never before (that I know of) did Jesus' face shine like the sun, and his clothes become white as light. Never before did Moses and Elijah appear. As my friend Kimberlee Conway Ireton writes, "Only when they fully awaken do they come face to face with mystery: they see Jesus in his glory, a glory that is his from before time, but which has been veiled from their sight until this moment when they finally see him as he truly is."
I don't blame the disciples for wanting to make tents on that mountain. I would want to bottle up that glory, to savour and make my home in it. It was good, but it was not time. My finite mind and sinful heart can not bear the majesty and strength of God. It was not time for the disciples to set up tents, and I can't claim that I am ready, either.
The partings of the veil are a gift, and I want to make space today to recall that I have known thin places in my journey. Just because I can't see something doesn't mean that it's not there.
The parting of the veil fills me with awe and delights my soul, but it also opens in me a yearning, a deep and almost painful desire. For in glimpsing this fleeting beauty, I become aware of a mystery - that there is more to life than usually meets the eye - and I yearn to enter more deeply into that mystery and to lie in those moments that shimmer with a radiance that is beyond what we usually see or know.
- Kimberlee Conway Ireton
But in the search, in the lost wandering, heaven slips in and out with just enough grace to lift the head, to squint the eyes, to call us to look and see. Mystery penetrates the mundane and holiness tames the longing. Though aching with loss, while sorrow tears through fragility, He shows us heaven. With a whisper and a nudge, He pulls back the roof and the walls tumble down. He cracks open the door and lures us to come and stand in the light of our Home.
Oh, I know that no eye has seen and no ear has heard what He has prepared for those who love Him. But let us with eyes and us with ears, us with homesick hearts and wandering spirits, continue to find the thin place, the light of a cracked door. Where we know that though we are planted on earth, we are rooted in heaven, and all headed Home.
- Settle Monroe
