Wakened by Eternity

No matter how far down I reach, I cannot touch the bottom of my pain.

Like a little boy testing the depth of the water, I descend deeper and deeper and panic when my feet still find nothing.

Yet there is a bottom, and perhaps I’m close. I just won’t get down to it this time.

How unprepared I’ve proved for my own Red Sea crossing. How much God shields me from the aridity of my love. I’ve grown accustomed to my old chains, to the crack of the whip. And now it’s taking a whole desert of my ungratefulness to prepare me for meeting this Other forever.

I feel like an adopted child who will see his real father and mother for the first time, knowing that it’s going to be a perfect match.
Knowing that I will be fully understood and will fully understand.
Knowing that I will be held and later taught to fly by Love Itself.
Knowing that I will meet the original of every caress, kiss and hug on Earth.

How incapable I am of receiving my own salvation. How much God mercifully hides from me the acuteness of my sin … and much more the torment of Jesus’ love. It will take eternity to say “thanks.”

What words could possibly convince you that nothing this world has to offer is worth savoring? What words could possibly convince me?

Only the salt of fasting and prayer give any flavor, and that, for the holy sacrifice of love.

All else is an illusion, but perhaps one that is necessary for a time. And to that illusion I will temporarily return.

For if the little boy knew the water was too deep, he might never go in. And some day he will discover that even he can touch bottom and surface once again.

On that day he will awaken as if from a dream—beholding himself in the embrace of Eternity.