On Orbit 12-27-9

Anderson, South Carolina

If you have had the rare and singularly spectacular experience of orbiting the earth in a space craft, you will quickly agree there is almost no experience that compares to it. Seeing the corona of the rising sun as one careens along at seventeen thousand miles an hour is inspiring beyond imagination. In mere moments, one is blasted from inky cosmic darkness into blinding solar brilliance. Black shadows transform into magnificent swirls of cerulean and platinum as morning spreads across Heaven.

A most tantalizing aspect of orbiting earth is the apparent horizontal flatness of land surfaces. One can look down through a porthole at vast mountain ranges and only distinguish them by virtue of small tufts of white on their peaks and hints of shadow cast by them early and late in the day.

If I am down on earth climbing mountains, I have an acute awareness of variations in elevation and inclinations. "Verticalness" can be a dizzying, overwhelming experience when roped to the side of a ten-thousand foot wall of granite for three weeks. One longs for, almost craves, anything horizontal. A ten-inch ledge can seem like a king-size bed. Yet, from three hundred miles up the overpowering "verticalness" is completely lost in a transcendent view of the world. Nothing has changed in the mountains, only my perspective has been altered.

Many others and I cared for a fellow who was confined to an air-driven wheel chair for thirty-seven years after having been paralyzed from the chin down in an auto accident. He was quite unable to attend to any of his personal needs whatever. He was absolutely one hundred percent dependent on others.

I was visiting with Ron some years ago when we found ourselves musing about the paths we have each taken through life. Ron made the observation that I have had a life that would easily be in the top one percent of lives lived because of my opportunity to travel the world, study in six American universities, work in five different careers, live in a castle in Europe, make good on many of my dreams. I have known but little suffering. Ron went on quickly to tell me that his life represented the bottom one percent of lives because of his vast unrelenting suffering and dependency. There was no argument from me. I assured him he was absolutely correct on both points.

At that moment years ago it occurred to me that we both had taken radically different paths to get to the same place. We were both sitting in the same room, looking at the same computer screen, wanting to do the same things, and we were both drinking from the same bottle of soda, even if I had to hold the bottle and give him his through a straw.

I said "Ron, what matters now is that we share the most important thing in common, a saving faith in the Son of God. One day you and I will both be very far from here. For unnumbered tomorrows we will walk in the New Jerusalem. You will have forgotten that you ever lived in a wheel chair or that you couldn't even wipe away your own tears, which you've had plenty of. You will be too busy dashing about, exploring the place He has prepared for you. I will have forgotten that I was able to study in six universities and travel by jet plane all over the world. I will be too busy learning the real answers to the questions that matter most. Hardly will it matter that I had a fine home and more than enough money in the bank. I will be walking on those streets of transparent gold, trying to find you."

Heaven will be like an orbiting space shuttle in some respects. From that vantage we will no longer find ourselves in dark shadows between mountain peaks. From the great height of Heaven it is unlikely we will even be able to see the shadows below. We will simply find ourselves in eternal brilliance that never ceases. Buddy is already there. We will one day see him there for ourselves.

“But for a season of darkness do we see dimly. One day the Son will rise above the horizon of Heaven.”

“Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, the hearts of men have not even imagined the things I have prepared for you.”