Yearning

By Darren Edgington

Creation creaks and moans like a bow screeching ever so slowly across poorly tuned fiddle strings . . . the party is yet to begin. Multicolored balloons lay flat awaiting helium. Festive adornment is in boxes - opened, yet unused. The trumpet is being shined and trials are even played . . . but in a hidden place . . . being made ready for 'the blast.' Yet it is not yet heard. Waiting.

Angels peer over the brink like lads watching cookies being baked, nestled high in a stairway loft above. Aromas fill the house, stomachs respond with preparatory moans . . . but savoring the feast is yet to come.

Elderly bones and sinews recall youthful vigor and the eye gleams and the countenance brightens as the final reunion is contemplated. Aging flesh stiffens like old rocking chairs now loud with pain and slow of motion, but hope surges with thoughts of a new heaven and a new earth just past this momentary suffering.

Silent gray stones stand all in rows like trained soldiers at Buckingham Palace - granite memorials chiseled with names, births, deaths. These motionless blocks will shift and give way as the seedlings beneath burst forth into glory, as if bowing to blazing suns rising in power out of the crumbling dirt . . . but not yet. More seeds are daily planted. More tears water the ground in apparent vanity. More dusty black suits assemble to grieve, to pray, to hear and to hope - 'I am the resurrection and the life.'

The willow tree bends in a fitting stance aside a dying elm. Shards of bark blanket the ground where Spring will find mushrooms, and life . . . but not yet. Now it is cold and crisp during this season of waiting.

Horrendous deeds multiply widening Cain's path. Abel's blood drips through history traced like a toddler's finger painting, smearing all of our days. The 'better blood' says 'it IS finished' . . . the daily news retorts, 'not yet.'

The enthroned God/man laughs. Oh when will we join His festivities? Martyrs unceasingly cry for the Day - an unsettled yearning in heaven. Simultaneously earth aches. A thick wool blanket shrouds all things with discomfort and weight. A soul-wrenching cry of 'Maranatha!' ascends from holy ones below as angels mix their prayers with the smoke of incense . . . arising like a cloud, permeating past the veil into the holy nostrils of the God who hears all things.

'A little while' seems eternal to our frailty, but we strain and bend our bodies and wills and struggle to pray, 'not my will but Thine be done.' And we wait . . .