Tuesday, June 14, 2011

His marks

I wrote a few weeks ago, a post entitled His Glory.  In that post I used the phrases, "Don't put a comma where He has put a period. and Don't put a period where He has put a comma."  As we all know punctuation changes the meaning of the sentence that they are added to.  Just like any good story, your story has punctuation added here and there.  My story has been "interrupted" by commas and periods and several times entire chapters have ended suddenly, but punctuation happens, without it we wouldn't know the meaning of chapters in our lives.  A good grammar teacher will tell you that run on sentences are confusing and sometimes nonsensical.  Punctuation is important, it helps us make sense of what is happening around us and to us.

Now I can say all that but I know that most punctuation hurts.  Actually to be blunt "it sucks". Very rarely are we looking for that period, so when it happens we are in a state of shock.  We feel like our hearts have been ripped out of our chests.  We, if only for a moment, lose hope.  We are often angry and even the best of us, might look to seek vengeance.  But as the days pass and we start to recover from our initial shock, we start to realize that it really might be for the best.  We are still not exactly sure what to do, but we start walking forward.  Putting one foot in front of the other.  We sometimes have to remind ourselves to breathe but our heart keeps beating and we keep going.

"So now what?",that was a question I asked myself many times during my journey.  I'm walking forward, but "Now what?" My advice is to keep walking.  Eventually you will know why that period came when it did, but you won't know if you don't keep walking.

So that's what I did I kept walking.  I walked and I walked wondering what would be around the next corner.  Sometimes I walked in circles and other times I walked right to the edge.  I often thought about turning back and sometimes I stomped around loudly but I kept walking.

What's great about walking is that you get to connect with new people who appear on your path.  If you were to sit still, you'd never know who or what was waiting for you around the bend.  I know I mentioned how important your "great cloud of witnesses" were in His Race, but when people enter into our lives, it might just be time to put away our sadness and celebrate.

As the pages of our story turn, people appear and reappear on each page and like I've said before even those that stay only for a moment really can make an impact, but it's those that stay with us with each turn of events that really make the greatest impression.  Old friends that might have been gone during some chapters of our lives may appear when we least expect it.  New friends that have their own story to tell may walk along with us for a while and those that have seen us through for years continue to walk beside us.

I think one of the hardest parts about changes in our lives is that we start comparing our past lives with our future lives.  We compare new people to old people and sometime our hurts are so deep that we don't even give others a chance.  We are sure because someone did something to us that other people will do as well.    We begin to insert periods in our lives and in the lives of others.

I know, we do it to protect ourselves and like you I am guilty of comparing the new and the old but I read this quote the other day, that gave me a different perspective.  "No one ever flew forward in life, looking backward. Therefore, the scars are just a reminder of where you have been, not where you are today."  We can't walk forward, while looking backward.  We can't be always anticipating the next punctuation mark.  

I know I've talked a lot about commas and periods, but don't forget about the question mark and the exclamation mark.  Again the same sentence ending in those two punctuation marks mean something totally different.  What if instead of stopping the beginning of a new relationship with a period, we inserted a question mark?  Question marks could mean proceed with caution. Or even better yet we inserted an exclamation mark, now instead of anticipating hurt we are anticipating excitement!


Remember the most important period in our lives was His Son's death, but the greatest punctuation mark was the exclamation after...He is risen!

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