Mourning the Morning

Mourning the Morning

What joy the dawn brings. A new day is born in hues of pink that remind us of a newborn’s cheeks. But with each celebration of morning, there is the mourning of a death. It is so core to our experience that most people don’t even notice this loss, but today’s morning mist marks the death of yesterday. We are surrounded by the casualties of time. Day after day dies at the hand of the invisible marching clock, our memories reminding us of our losses. Many of us do not realize how we grieve these losses, but the fact that most of us struggle with change indicates that we do feel the effects of time.

Each new phase in life means that the old phase has to die. We have parties, give gifts, and have ceremonies as ways of celebrating the new and letting go of the old. We work hard at remembering the lost yesterdays. Photos, bits of paper printed with dates and places line our scrapbooks. Our past is our present and our future. Yesterdays make us who we are today and affect who we become tomorrow.

But then what if yesterday was not gone forever? What if we never lost it at all? What would God’s scrapbook be like? Perfectly preserved, could we pull it down and read it again and again, experiencing our lives in crystal clear memory? We could study it, gaining understanding into the why’s and how’s we could never see while knee deep in living. We could smile at our memories, and remember the hard times, but now instead of “through a glass darkly,” we could finally see the purpose behind the trial or loss.

Just a wondering that makes me long for heaven.