Anna Resurget

Today is Anna’s 24th birthday. I was going to say it is difficult to imagine her this age, but it is really impossible to do so. And I’m not sure it is helpful to try to do so.

Timberley has a group of young ladies that come to our home once a week for prayer and Bible study. Many of them are close to the age Anna would be if she were still with us. But none of them is Anna. The problem is not that it is difficult to imagine her this age. The problem is that in my mind she is fixed at nine years old. She will never be older.

As time moves on, things change. My face is older now. My hair–the part I still have–is getting gray. Timberley and I complain about pains in our bodies that were never there in the past. When we see Samuel, we see a tall, handsome young man. We see him married to Grace and living on his own. But Anna is forever fixed as a nine-year-old girl.

It is funny that I have to work at remembering Sam at past ages. He is in the present with me now. But I cannot imagine Anna at any other age than nine. Sam is still part of the passing of time. Anna has become a fixed point. I have not thought of the difference until now.

What else in life is like that? What are the things that are current with us–that move and change over time? And what are those things that are fixed and permanent?

I suppose that the difference between my inability to imagine Anna as something other than a nine-year-old and the difficulty of remembering Sam as a child is due to the overwhelming strength of the present. Our moment-by-moment reality is what is most present in our minds at any given time. This seems so obvious that I almost feel silly saying it. But the ramifications of that truth are important. When we remember the past, we need time and the freedom of mind to reflect on things no longer present. We cannot think about the past when we are in the middle of a hurried event. We need an easy chair and a quiet house. The present is so much in our mind, that we have to work to get it out of our mind.

I think that this truth is what is behind Paul’s comment in 1 Corinthians 13 that three things remain: faith, hope and love. He goes on to say that the greatest of these three is love. What does Paul mean by that? My best guess is that Paul is here talking of three temporal realities. Paul refers to faith when he is thinking of things in the past. We believe (have faith) that certain events took place in the past. Paul says elsewhere that we must believe that God raised Jesus from the dead in order to be saved (Romans 10:9). The fact that God raised Jesus from the dead is not something we can see. So we must believe that it took place.

On the other hand, for Paul, hope is what we think about the future. We have a sure hope in what God will do for us in the future. It is interesting, and significant, that for Paul the faith we have that particular events took place in the past, and the hope we have that particular events will take place in the future, are both just as certain.

But both faith and hope are eclipsed by love. Love rounds out this picture of time. If faith is what we have in past events, and hope is what we have in future events, love is what we do in the present. And this overwhelming power of the present that I spoke of above is why for Paul, the greatest of the three is love. We can reflect on things that we believe. We can live according to the things hoped for in the future, but what is before us at each moment is to live in love. For Jesus, his greatest commandment was to love one another. He said that by this, others will know we are his disciples, by the way that we love one another. And it is this present reality that is most important for us as we live out our lives.

On Anna’s birthday each year, I am tempted to imagine her in what would be her present age. I suppose I cannot escape this exercise in futility. But I have to come to grips with the fact that Anna is part of the past. She should remain fixed in my mind as a nine-year-old girl. That is a right and good thing. But while the past surely shapes the way we live in the present, it should not become the object of our thinking such that it eclipses the present. Everything must remain in the place assigned it.

In the same way, I should not spend too much energy thinking about Samuel as he was in the past. I have a present tense relationship with him that is significant. If I take too much of my mental space to think about how he was at this time or that time in the past, I will miss out on the really important thing, which is to love him in the present.

So on this birthday of Anna, I will say, “Happy 24th Birthday, you nine-year-old girl! We love you and miss you. But because we have faith in the past work of Christ, and because we have a sure hope in the glory God has for us in the future, we know that you are well, and we know that we will see you again.”

“PS: Say his Grandma Deloris for me. And say hi to Jesus.”

“Love, Dad”