Tournament of Flowers

July 16, 2006

Joel Akin

Its a couple hours after midnight and I was unable to sleep. I found that it had been a rough morning and a rougher evening seeking for the things of God. Like a man who had walked across country I expected someone there to greet me but the night ended without a song or dance just a whimper. Sometimes you listen clearly and hope dearly that this time there will be someone there waiting for you.

War is a lot like this day. It battles you for warmth and joy and you cannot imagine anything in the entire universe except that which you have just written. and when you arrive at your destination you cannot help but think "This time I going to make a difference..." And you don't. At least not in the way you think.

There is a cartoon I watched tonight called Futurama. In it Fry is a delivery boy for a pizza company. He hates his life, his family, his friends and everything he touches is stolen or lost or broken. He falls into a cyrogenic freezer and is flash carried forward a 1,000 years to the year 3,000.

It is ironic in a way because if you were to ask some of us what will life be like in the year 3,000 most of us would think "Jesus Himself will have returned to earth by then." and that is our prayer and hope. And none of us has the courage to ask "What if it doesn't happen?"

I have asked God this question in the past and he has affirmed to me that I will see Him and His coming and there is no one who can stop it. But why then do we wonder so as Christians. I want to see his return and I want to be there when it happens.

Yet it is still a struggle for us to hang on in faith. Instead we are standing by waiting for a door to open. Like Jesus said "I stand at the door and knock..." Like us the doors have to open before we can move forward.

So what do we do? Do we face a battle without structure? Do we strive for wisdom without truth? Love without hope? Time without the beat or measure?

What do we as Christians do to arrive at the destiny we long for. If time carries us then who carries time? We deal with a time that is temporal. Like Gods time which is free of pain and sorrow this time is harder to deal with. It carries pain and trials