Birth Days and Sun Rises

There are many things I will not miss about this old earth when I get to Kingdom Come. I won’t miss fear or anger or lies. And especially I won’t miss the way political parties addict people to the sensation of hatred from which they can conjure up a sick kind of loyalty and power. I suppose to be rid of every iota of evil is why God needs to wipe the slate clean and make a whole new world in the first place. I hope on my millionth birthday I don’t even remember all the bad stuff, not even a tiny bit.

But there are a few things I will miss very much. These are the things I should cherish the most while in this old skin because I’ll only have these swiftly flowing years to enjoy them. One is the sunrise on a clear morning over the ocean. I have spent many hours in cool darkness, watching and waiting for the exhilaration of the streaks of red in the night sky and for the bursting speck of light over the straight expansive horizon that illuminates only the east while the heavens around it lie still in deep darkness. Then within minutes this speck of light bursts forth into a coin of brightness rising steadily to give birth to a new day. Glorious sunrises over the ocean shower my soul with raindrops of bliss. I’ll miss sun rises when I am in the light-filled land where there is no use for them.

But most of all I will miss births and babies and little toddlers. I understand that in the happy land of immortality, where sickness, sorrow, and sighing have all fled away, where no anguish haunts us from the separation of death, where love reigns supreme, where there is no marriage because genders fade into the unity of God, babies will never be born.

Yet, how I will miss waiting for the birth of a new clean person into my world. How I will miss their energetic exuberance, their bright laughing eyes, their wonder and merriment. How I will miss playing and cuddling, and showing these little ones new and wonderful aspects of life.  If I am wise for my years, then I will cherish these days of flesh, and lock these beautiful memories safely away in a vault down deep in my heart. So on lazy days in the land of love, I can bring them out one by one, and gaze on them with a nostalgic smile here, and a giggle there. Then, if I can, I will go and fetch that one whose birth and early days I held in my vaulted heart, all grown up in glory, and together we will remember the striking beauty of birth days and sun rises on the earth of our birth, the land of mottled light and darkness.