Finite

I sat outside under the stars last night with two dear friends that were struggling for perspective and for truth. As they tried to find the words to express their burdens and asked questions such as "What do you really care about right now?", and "What if I can mess everything up?", I was struck by the needs and the pain and the fragile, human souls that I am surrounded by. There I was again, pushed into a place where nothing I could say would make anything better, nothing I could do would change any circumstance.

I felt tiny. This campus felt tiny. This earth is so small. I sat there thinking about how this planet is suspended in space, held together by nothing else but the word of its Creator. The air that we breathe and our hearts that beat steadily: we don't deserve them. And these trials and little sufferings, they're all God loving us and working in us so that we might be conformed to the image of our Savior.

Without His grace, we can do nothing. We are tiny and incapable, yet God has made us alive to Him. I want an eternal perspective, one that sets the cross always in front of my too-often blind eyes. I want to know Him who was crucified, He who is radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. (Hebrews 1:3)

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

For thine is the kingdom.
(T.S. Eliot)