Perspectives

With water squirting in all directions and tears of sheer joy and exhaustion coming from our eyes; a few of mah boys and I raced down the hallway. We would doubtless get some sort of repercussion for this sometime in the near future, but for now our sole purpose was to see who could last the longest from the streams of water coming from the spray bottles, or possibly from the more exasperating and incessant laughter that intrinsically bellowed from or mouths and hearts with a chuckle and squeal reserved only for the most happy of fairy tales.

Needless to say, we made a mess; not a large one but substantial enough to bring pope (papee) out of his room with only half-hidden amusement at our childish escapades. I had run round and round, sometimes being pursued and sometimes in close chase of one or many of my devoted compatriots of seeming indecency. Often I would be carrying one on my back which was no small feat in some of mah boys cases; not because they were overly large for their age but rather because their bodies had grown larger than their inner perception of smallness. They still thought themselves small and cuddly and carry-able, but in reality this was not nearly the level of truth they thought it to be, I can assure you.

In any case, I thought it to be a healthy reprieve from the boredom of inactivity; racing hither and thither, under tables and down halls. And as is probably obvious, I was not the one to suggest the addition of squirt bottles to our jollity, nor was I the one to use it with such proficiency as was exhibited by my fellow amigos of mayhem. This, of course, necessitated that I make a hasty retreat to my room with the utmost dignity of some aged legionnaire, where I am still, writing to you.

Such experiences invoke many feelings; feelings of joy, feelings of happiness, exuberance, and release from all of one’s many cares. But the feeling most prevalent that I get after such interaction is one of oneness or connectedness and maybe even meaning. Yes, I feel like I meant something to those boys tonight and they had meant something to me, like as if they had seen me for the first time. I feel as though I broke down some of their insecurities and their walls and simply by letting them spray me with some water and chancing them around the house; so simple and yet so rare, so necessary and yet often overlooked.

The thought strikes me, what if we never got past hello and a hand shack with anyone? What if, “How’s the weather there?” was the only question we ever asked people. Nowadays we all know it’s a cliche but we use it anyway don’t we, like as if it were a little joke or a witty pun. There are many reasons for this I suppose, but I think those many and various reasons can be summed up like this: we all got a trash bag full of junk, some people hold on to their bag real tight so that none leaks out to anyone else and others try and dump all their junk on other people. This makes for a pretty incondusive arrangement for sharing anything beyond something that everybody has, like access to the weather channel.

To be able to share your junk you have to know that your junk isn’t who you are.

That’s part of what Christ did when He came down here; He literally and figuratively became the garbage-man, and because of of Him our identity is no longer connected in anyway with our junk. It says in the scriptures that when the angel appeared to Gideon he addressed him as a “mighty man of valor.” Was Gideon a mighty man of valor? Hardly. Was he even that keen on becoming one? But by the end of his life and his story every breathing man in his country would have considered him of valorous caliber. How was this possible? Because Gideon decided to believe in God’s reality about himself rather than his own; what he could see. Now did he become what God knew him to be eventually? Yes, he did, but not a moment before God decided it appropriate. So to our eyes we still got junk, but in God’s eyes all He can see is Christ.

The sooner we start seeing ourselves through God’s eyes, the sooner we can start really unloading our garbage, and start sharing with other people, even if it’s only a squirt of water in the face.