A Stolen Glimpse of Heaven
By Faith Wilson
The project was about visual literacy. My professor had given us 10 words and we had to take one photo that represented each word; diffusion, economy, exaggeration, etc. The project due date was quickly approaching. I frantically searched my apartment for something to alleviate the assignment.
“Hmmm, boldness,” I thought as I considered the last word in need of fulfillment. My eye caught my roommate’s dying flowers moping in the corner. I snapped a photo. Not bold enough. Then, for some reason, instead of giving up on the dying flowers and moving on, I looked again. It was as if the flowers had whispered to me, “Can you really see no boldness in us?”
An unexpected, fierce determination arose within me. Could I bring this perishing beauty back to life? I held my camera beneath one of the wilting blossoms and blindly hit the shutter. Click. I glanced at the instant playback. Suddenly, I was obsessed with this photo. The world around me seemed to fade away. Engrossed in finding and revealing the character, meaning and beauty in that which had been disregarded as dead, I took photo after photo until I had liberated the flowers’ boldness and brought back to life its glorious beauty.
My understanding of reality had been altered. As if being reborn into a new world, I began seeing everything and everyone around me through different lenses. Assumptions demanded rediscovery. The ordinary begged to be unearthed. Could it be possible that I had been walking blind? Were there new ways to interpret each passing moment? Yes. I began to anticipate meaning where I had felt nothingness, hope where there had been impossibility. A new resolve erupted within me to reevaluate situations, relationships, and circumstances. The fusion of old ideas with new perspectives allowed me to reassess problems with expectation of fresh, innovative solutions. I embraced the challenge of seeing everything–creation, interactions, ideas–differently. There was new potential in the unexceptional. The unsolvable was now child’s play. The impossible had become a challenge to repossess hope.
I had caught a peek of the world through its Creator’s eyes. All of creation was demanding, screaming, begging to be redeemed. The death and resurrection of Jesus could no longer be seen in religious terms only. Life began rising victoriously out of death in the nuances and moments of my days. I had stolen a stunning glimpse of heaven on earth, and I was enamored.
After submitting this project to my professor I promptly changed my major and reconsidered all of the lofty plans I had before me. I am convinced that God created me to look beyond that which is seen by the naked eye. He calls me to resurrect the new from the established. All tired assumptions demand to be challenged. The end result will be wholeness and redemption. I have become convinced that rebirth into life seen through the Creator’s eyes is the key to ending the cycles of poverty, eliminating corruption, bringing hope to the heart-broken, and peace to those in despair. With ideas as our medium and the world as our canvas, let us resolve to view the world with new eyes.
My mom has a copy of this photo framed in our house. Perhaps to another it’s just a flower, but to me, it changed everything.
“The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” –Romans 8:19-21
By Faith Wilson
to make me what I ought to be
The sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars
Cuz He’s still workin’ on me.”
I have a heart friend named David Arcos. Every time we’re together, this one-of-a-kind worshipper of God makes my heart sing. He helps me to celebrate the creative spirit, and he inspires me with his passion to serve orphans in Zambia. David is attempting to do the impossible. He lives with a God-sized dream of rebuilding a village for orphans whose lives have been decimated. As David talks about these children, his soul is alive with hope. As you read, allow your heart to be drawn into what he sees …
Running to Stand On Mountains
By David Arcos
The shouting. I think I’m gonna miss that the most. The desperate, heart-felt, thankful shouting to God coming from the throats of orphans. They remember what life was like. Rachel said it best when she compared her life in the partly built children’s village with her living hell just a year ago, “We were the parents and now we are the babies.” Children were handed children to care for while their parents died.
Peddling sex was the only way for many of these girls to make an existence. Now they sing about being rescued … home-spun poetic tunes call to memory their stories of redemption. They are still children, and yet have endured more than a lifetimes worth of pain. Challenge and struggle has aged them. Crying is a luxury they are learning to experience again.
A young boy named Joseph described to me how his grandfather, a family shaman, would “drown him in his dreams” before Bishop and Busa Ted stopped the shaman with the power of prayer.
Joseph shouts to heaven with the passion for life. He runs with no shoes on the rugged earth. These orphans, together, trained to run a race that we hoped would gain them the completion of their village with a school, clinic, church, and a future.
And why not?
Why couldn’t 30 orphans who had already been immersed in hell stand up, turn around and prove to the nations that with the power of God pulsing in their veins, nothing can hinder them from running, sprinting, lasting, pursuing, seeking, struggling, rising, and soaring into an impossible future. Their shouts are heard. They drift across the Atlantic. Their strength makes us believe. In the middle of all that darkness, Africa is being stirred by a shout of the fury of faith. This shout fills the sky. It is a declaration of victory, an assertion that they know where they’ve come from and who they are. May our soft prayers turn to shouting too! Why not?
“Sing to Him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy!” Psalm 33:3
To help support orphans in Zambia, please contact David Arcos.
Today I sifted through some nostalgic papers and photos my mom kept when she was still alive on this earth. I came across this ode to the Creator, written by my uncle Dave, who also wrote the hit song “Wildflower.” This is one of those rare poems that deserves to be relished; ever so slowly, like a hot drink on a windy night as rain batters the window.
The Beneficiary
By Dave Richardson
Will I ever be entitled to the knowledge that you hold?
For I thirst and I am starving in my mind,
And though I am secure within the future of my soul,
There are histories my heart has yet to find.
How did it all begin, from the void you live within?
Through eternities where none but you exist,
From an endless parallel You joined the lines of Cause and Will,
Creating life from out of the abyss.
You alone have been where time itself cannot survive,
And I long to see beyond the edge of space,
I’d like to look at Heaven through the vision in your eyes,
Or look upon the wisdom on your face.
When did you decide that it was time to cut the key,
That unlocked all the darkness to the light?
Did you breathe upon some spark floating through infinity,
To set the skies on fire in the night?
There are birds with eyes of fire lighting diamonds in the sky,
As the blaze above continues to expand,
With ever changing hues in reds and greens and blues,
In perfection from the Artist’s gentle hand.
I am mortal. Life will end, but I shall live to live again,
If I am favored whatsoever in your sight,
Give me time enough to live to enjoy the gifts you give,
And finally, let me shine within your light.
Let my shadow fly through your vast and endless sky,
That I might see the future and the past,
And when this captive life is through, I will come to realize
That my spirit and my soul are free at last.
MY NAME IS RUTH. I am in the 11th grade and will graduate next year. I want to share with you my story, and describe how our challenges shape our character and fill us with the strength to persevere. I am convinced that in Jesus there is always hope. With God, nothing is impossible.
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