We Are Not Forgotten, Unknown or Lost
Driving through the countryside in the Spring of the year I pay special attention to where daffodils and surprise lilies poke through with their welcome of warmer days. Often, if one pays attention, you can see by the presence of unexpected flowers where a farm house once stood, where a flower garden used to proudly bloom or where once a driveway was marked with a colorful welcome to strangers. If you pause long enough to consider it, you can hear the laughter of children, the bellowing of cattle in the long-gone pasture or even observe laundry flapping in the wind, all reminders that few things stay the same and generations do pass, along with the things they held precious, including their toys.
Abandoned swing sets and forgotten teddy bears may well be two of the more notable markers of my age, the remnants of childhood play now quiet and forlorn. Other assorted playmates would be the toy tractors and implements which, outgrown, found themselves silently left in the forever sheds of toy boxes and closets, seldom to be picked up or farmed with again, save for the grandchild who momentarily considers the odd toy, then sets it down, taking up the electronic game pad for more stimulating company. Even the thought of those things all these years later leaves me a bit melancholy, longing for a simpler time, a day when daffodils bloomed along the road and surprise lilies made their entrance later in the summer along the front lawn. I wonder where the toys have gone, for certainly they do not annually continue to appear as flowers do along the yard, and I imagine, too, that they wonder about me, somehow keeping track over all the miles and years, smiling at our children and grandchildren, longing to be picked up once more by children happy to have them, the toys once again found to be precious in someone's sight.
I know, I know, it is a little bit of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of the Misfit Toys" meets "Toy Story 4's" antique store of unloved and unwanted toys, both of which meet the memories of a once-upon-a-time farm boy whose toys have long ago disappeared into the abyss of disuse. Like a swing set setting still in the snow or an unseeing teddy bear left on the porch of a cabin, time cannot recover what the will of the child has long left behind. Like fading pictures in a unopened album, the hours we prayed would never end have now gradually ceased to exist, save for in the recesses of our mind where the long ago waits for the yet to be.
In my heart, I am so very grateful God does not tire of us as we tire of our toys, as I have left them behind in my childhood. Maybe that is why I so love Jesus. He doesn't just stand by me, then move on to the next best thing. Jesus sticks with me. He sits with me on the edge of the sandbox of life and courses a new journey of faith in the places we go. He raises a call of wonder when imagination gives way to new creation. He weeps when I weep and encourages when I am down. He does not turn away when I make mistakes, neither does He deny me in my darkest hour. He is steadfast in a way I could never have imagined, yet gives me hope that in each moment I can do for others as He is doing with me. He loves . . . far more deeply than I, or any of us, can love ourselves.
For Jesus, there are no misfit toys, no unloved or unwanted toys, no put away and forgotten toys. We are His friends, His family, His community of the eternally beloved and that will be forever enough. The empty tomb is sign and seal of that commitment. It is there that we see the daffodils bloom and the surprise lilies make their grandest entrance. It is there every child is Home and every lost love finds resolution. Memories come to Life and Life comes to shape memory. Wholeness is found for everyone in the holy, sacred place of Christ's heart, bringing into new being the old home places long gone and the games children once played, all to the delight of our Creator.
Maybe my mind's eye has taken me too far or maybe my theology has gone awry . . . but tell that to the teddy bear, the empty swing, the unused tractor and the lonely combine, who all sit in the pews on Sunday morning praying for a relevance in the current age, which they felt left them years ago. Christ makes us all new and THAT is the Good News of the Gospel. Ask, and you will receive. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you. Christ is the heart of the New Community, where every flower blooms on time, every toy has a child who adores it, and every child has a Savior who will never let any of them go.
Such is my vision of the Kingdom, from a porch where a teddy bears sits in snow and the swing set longs to give laughter all over again. Something to ponder on the way.
Peace.
