june 20, late night, the pond

have you ever snuggled up with eternity? I mean, have you let pieces of it lay against your skin? have you rested in the arms of this big-sweeping-concrete-daydream? have you let your shoulders sink into the chest of forever?

I'll tell you what it's like.

It's like sitting on the dock with some people you love and feeling your spine settle into the soft wood. Except, in eternity, you won't have a spine, but that is beside the point. It's like being on that dock and tilting your head back toward the end when the wood runs out and the pond starts. And it's like looking through your upside-down eyes and not really knowing what is water and what is sky.

And it's like playing guitar on that dock with a headlamp to read chords and you are singing with your friends. The words that come out don't have perfect tone, but they are perfect words. They are words like "you are my strength when I am weak" and "you've taken me from the miry clay" and "pure and holy, tried and true." They are praise, and they are leaping from your tongues and becoming firefly lights that make the trees around the pond look like they burning or covered in glitter.

And eternity feels like truth, the type you speak. The type like sharing in things that are hard or things that make you cry with laughter or make you remember. Forever feels like the things you say to someone because you love them. Forever feels like the things that are said to you because you are loved.

It isn't very quiet, eternity. It's got a few different voices and crickets and bullfrogs mixed in. It sounds sometimes like breeze or sticks crunching under a shoe or dogs barking far off.

...and god, it's gorgeous. It's just like thousands of stars above your head, some of them falling, some of them brighter than others, some of them making patterns and shapes you can dream up or learn from a book. And that could be cliche, the thought of forever looking like a bunch of stars. But it's not like that, because eternity is beautiful, and beauty is unique, isn't it?

the best part about eternity is how it sneaks up on you, on a sunday night when you weren't looking for it. It brings the reminder that you two have an old friendship. You've been together now since you were born, did you know that? Maybe you forgot. But each day (actually right now, that second right...there) is making it. Forever is making you.

Eternity is about worship and expanding colors and glittery, twinkling firefly lights. It's about loving and laughing and learning and several other words. You've got to know that it's the promise, it's exactly why you're alive.

have you got eyes for heaven?