Enough of these bullet point posts. I read an article a few weeks ago, one paragraph particularly catching my heart:

The second thing on my mind was to encourage the young man not to think of these days as wasted--a lost parenthesis interrupting so-called "real life." Every day he trusts God is real life, and something good is going on behind the deceptive sameness. One day it will erupt into the visible, as God brings about a new and beautiful thing when the time is right.

There are a few notable verbs in that smidgen: encourage, think, trust, bring, and my personal favorite, erupt.

I like the idea of erupting. I like the idea that someday while we are riding our bikes or skipping over cracks in sidewalks, eating chicken salad or tying our shoes, answering the phone or twinkling our eye, that there will be something instantaneous. I like the idea that it will happen quickly and surprisingly. That the parenthesis of our lives, the dash between the dates on a headstone, all of it will suddenly be so meaningless. That the dead in Christ shall rise right then. I like that.

But here we are still, in the meantime, bated breath catching on real life and seemingly wasted days. Here we are tying our shoes and riding our bikes and working 9-5 and paying our bills and twiddling our collective thumbs. I am not so good at the Every Day We Trust God is Real Life. I like to think that it's preparing me for real life, that this hurdle is only a minute scale of the real hurdle yet to come. And perhaps it is, but what if it's not?

What if yesterday was preparation for today and, really, that's it? Isn't that enough? If I had somehow skipped yesterday, wouldn't my today be muddled up and frustrating?

And something good is going on behind this deceptive sameness, this computer monitor and three color logos and ten 10 minute jobs. And I don't know what the new and beautiful thing is, or when the time will be right.

But I know it will erupt. It will surprise. And it might not be for a long, long time. But it will be worth all the days punctuated by questions and quotes.

Period.