Sunday 9 September 2018

Hoping for a sunflower stand in Heaven

Our last stand of sunflowers - 2018
Walking back to my house, I spotted a football under a tree. It was probably the last place my son dropped it after tossing a few passes to me or to some other lucky shmo he could convince to play a round of catch with him. As I picked up the football to put it away, suddenly, without warning, it hit me. Hard. I cried. My eyes just didn't get a bit moist. No. I sobbed with short gasps of breath. It was an emotional moment similar to when I first received news of my Dad's death in 1999. As loud of a cry as when I left my friends in Grand Rapids to move home because I had graduated from Calvin College but they had one year of school left.

But this time, it tore my heart even more. Weeks before our two oldest children left home for university, my wife began to prepare mentally and emotionally. Me... not so much. I thought I could drop them off and I'd handle it with ease. Wrong again. When I picked up that football to put it away, a new reality hit me hard in the face. My kids were taking their first steps toward moving out. Oh, they would come back on weekends, holidays, and summer breaks but it wouldn't be the same. They would always leave again. That's how it works.

I had one of those moments a few weeks ago. Again, I hadn't really prepared for it but knew somewhere in the back of my mind that it would happen eventually. Wendi and I have grown sunflowers for our roadside stand for the last number of years. It was a way to earn extra money and gave Wendi 'something to do' during the months of summer vacation. For those who know our story, Wendi's health has changed drastically and we don't know what next summer holds. What seems sure right now, is that we won't be filling our roadside stand next July. Which brings me to my moment - as I was pushing the empty flower stand back down our winding driveway to our shed, it hit me. Hard. I cried. This time it was more like last September when I said for the last time: "Lock the door" to my mom's cooling, lifeless body as it lay on her deathbed. I'd tell her to "Lock the door" with a Dutch accent almost everytime I left her apartment whether it was at her condo, her retirement home and even during her stay at the seniors' care centre where she spent the last months of her life.

Everything comes to an end. It has to... "nothing lasts forever". What we don't realize during the most generic moments of life is that a story is being written, and that story will say "The end" on the last page. We don't like to think about anything pleasant coming to an end because... well... that's unpleasant. We're reminded that everything has its own time, as Solomon wrote in the book of Ecclesiastes 3:

A Time for Everything
3 For everything there is a season,
    a time for every activity under heaven.
2 A time to be born and a time to die.
    A time to plant and a time to harvest.
3 A time to kill and a time to heal.
    A time to tear down and a time to build up.
4 A time to cry and a time to laugh.
    A time to grieve and a time to dance.
5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
    A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
6 A time to search and a time to quit searching.
    A time to keep and a time to throw away.
7 A time to tear and a time to mend.
    A time to be quiet and a time to speak.
8 A time to love and a time to hate.
    A time for war and a time for peace.

We may not be selling sunflowers next summer, our kids will move back home only to move out again, I won't see my parents in this life again, and reuniting with my old college buddies seems like a day far, far away, if ever. There's only one thing that I know will last and will never end and that's the promise of a new heaven and a new earth given to us in Revelation 21:

The New Jerusalem
21 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

3 I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them.[a] 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”

I wonder if there will be room for our sunflower stand in this new city? Just asking. :)

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