What's the one thing God Himself cannot experience? And if we're to join Him, as is understood in the religions of the world and assumed by the spirituality of our minds, then we will no longer experience it, either:

Wonder.

The crawling infant who reaches for a piece of fuzz on the carpet. The cosmologist realizing a startling revelation. The lifelong childhood of wonder that living in these precarious, finite frames allows us to enjoy, ever-opening the doors that weren't there before.

Doors. I will miss the doors, too.

Oh, yes, and pralines.

I will miss the innocence of children, and watching them grow--watching their use of the lessons they learn. I'll miss horizons--mountains, sunsets, possibilities. I'll surely miss the water, especially rivers and streams. Chatting with strangers. A warm bed. The Oxford comma? Holding doors for people. Girl Scout cookies. Movies. Nature--plant and animals, both. Art. Freedom. Peace. Love. I will miss all of these gifts, unless somehow, between now and then, I come to know the Giver.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote:

OF writing many books there is no end;

And I who have written much in prose and verse

For others' uses, will write now for mine...

In her first line she was quoting the much-wearied author of Ecclesiastes (12:12), who went on to complain:

…and much study is an affliction of the flesh.

Well, I won’t (and don’t) miss examinations!

But Books…

An afterlife devoid of airy public libraries, dusty old bookshops, dog-eared paperbacks, Shakespeare’s First Folio, the Gutenberg Bible, illuminated manuscripts, fragile papyri, the Rosetta Stone - and even Kindles! - doesn’t bear thinking about.

Believing in the absolute sovereignty and supremacy of God... nothing. He loves His children; He will provide everything I need. Everything on earth that I love, everything considered worth missing, is only a watered-down version of the majesty that God's new heaven and earth will contain.

Revelation 21 continues on to say in verse 4, "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

How could anything here on earth compare to a paradise like that?

If I were to lose

to the Afterlife,

I'd miss most...

our Imaginings!

irrational indeed;

No longer having

Imagination left,

how'd we reckon

what it is...?!

So perhaps I'd embrace

without second's remiss

the holy silent deafness,

and gaping emptiness,

with colorless grin..?

From this safe distance,

I shudder that we would

As there'd be Nothing

to remind, and save us

from falling through

02.28.2023

No More... challenge @markysparky