Preventing Grace
As the days careen by like out of control, unthinking, inebriated college students unclear about what’s supposed to happen in the morning, I have been morosely totting up places I wish I could go, books I wish I could read, dishes I wish I could taste, and vistas over which I wish I could gaze in nostalgic glistering wonder.
But then yesterday, as I was trundling in my rusting mini-van through one of those very unprepossessing parts of this town—which are legion, turn your head one way or another and there is yet another frightful mini-mall squatting disconsolate and neglected—I found myself enumerating a multitude of experiences that may continue to pass me by without a trace of regret or sorrow.
It wasn’t a list so much as a jumble of human opportunities that, when I considered them, made me shudder. It included feats like getting a tattoo, trying to make sense of reddit, going into Tully’s, wearing tennis shoes ever for any reason, stuffing myself into a unitard, attaching false nails to my real ones, climbing any mountain, base jumping, learning how to code, going on a cruise of any kind, finding myself, going to a big huge women’s conference, floating in a boat down any wide mosquito-y river, eating fried bugs, sitting through a sportsing event, enduring a rock concert, reading Janette Oke, designing and building a house, flying in a tiny plane, running for political office, and running a marathon or running for any reason at all. There are a thousand ordeals that human people profess to enjoy that interest me so little they do not even register on any scale of human desire.
When I considered the matter from this angle—things I don’t want to ever do for any reason no matter how much anyone tries to convince me otherwise—it occurred to me that the inexorable march of time isn’t so pressing, in fact, that I would be willing to expend any real effort to do the only thing on my actual bucket list.
Indeed, the single item on my “Bucket List” is to some day visit the Precious Moments chapel in Carthage, Missouri. I long to see that incredible sight, to stop and gape at such an idea brought about in time and space by other human people.
However, I don’t want to see it so much that I have heretofore made any effort to accomplish my dream. Nor will l probably ever concoct concrete plans to travel all that way, to find a place to stay, to buy all that gas, to pack all those lunches, to scroll around my map app, and then to climb out of my car and request admittance.
So then it occurred to me that this feeling of apathy is reassuringly sensible, and can be traced back to my secure trust in the Resurrection. I know I complain a lot about everything and it would be hard, sometimes, to even know I am a Christian from the way I flail anxiously about, thrashing my way from one catastrophe to the next. The love of Christ isn’t emanating all that brightly from my dark and depressed heart.
But stopping to think about the Resurrection always relieves my troubled conscience. The new heavens and the new earth are not going to have hideous eyesores poking out from around every corner. I won’t ever, for eternity, have to wear tennis shoes. The bad things I would like to avoid will not be looming on any horizon.
Likewise, I don’t have to rush off to Constantinople, or Hanoi, or Patagonia any time soon because whatever they look like then will be a lot nicer than they do now, even if now they are completely delicious. Those longed for vistas will be veritably and substantially true. Eternity will be plenty. Just because the clock is ticking down on this mortal life ever more swiftly, doesn’t mean that I am losing out. The good things that I can’t have now will be surpassed by a greater goodness later, and the bad things will go away and I won’t have worry about them.
Except for the Precious Moments Chapel. I probably do need to see that before I die.
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