I have experienced the distinct financial woe of having two children who have braces - with another three probably around the corner. I had braces, and so did my husband. It's amazing to see how messed up the human mouth can become. Teeth start growing in all kinds of places they shouldn't. In Claire's case, teeth aren't appearing where they're supposed to at all. It makes me think...
What was creation like in its first days? How perfect were Adam and Eve? I bet they didn't have snaggle teeth. I look around me at the wonders of creation... the vivid colors of a sunset, the intricacy of a seashell, the beauty of an eagle in flight... and I wonder how they could possibly have been more perfect than they are, but I know that they once were. They are only trace reminders of what God is capable of creating. I have been on some sight-seeing trips - the Grand Canyon, the Rocky Mountains, the Smoky Mountains, the Pacific cliffs, the Gulf of Mexico. Their beauty was breathtakingly remarkable. However, there is something very clear to me when I look at them. They are broken. The ocean, for example, no matter how pretty, has brownish water, washes up various smelly dead things, and reeks an undeniable odor. The Grand Canyon is a giant hole in the earth... a beautiful crater, no doubt, but still a void where something even more beautiful used to be. Even in my own back yard - which is fantastically beautiful especially in the winter, when snow is on the trees - dead tree branches litter the landscape. Dust from our gravel road settles over everything - making it seem ordinary again.
However, even the most marred of creation often strikes me with such beauty and awe that I can scarcely contain it. I can see that it is not the way the Creator meant it to be, but my fallen mind cannot fathom a more beautiful perfection. Or can it? It is just outside my grasp. My reach is simply too short. It makes me ache inside... much like I do over my own inability to grasp the beauty that has always been so illusive. I wonder what it was like to live with a mind - not fallen - that could bear to see the wonders around it with fresh eyes. Over generations of fallen vision and reduced perfection, we have become farther and farther removed from that for which we were created.
And us... the pinnacle of the beauty He made... the zenith of His creative genius... the reflection of His own image and glory... we are the farthest fallen of creation. Even the most primitive of human emotion is beauty in action. The showing of it - anger, fear, trust, joy, strength, exhaustion, sadness, grief, desolation, wonder - all hold the possibility of a dignity not our own. We were made for a greatness we no longer own - a glory we find difficult to reflect.
As life continues to overtake me, my greatest prayer is that I can better reflect the glory I was created to reveal... not that I am seen, but that I disappear as Christ is seen. I pray that any favor I receive will be supernaturally obtained and therefore that the glory will be given back to Him to whom it is due. Our bodies and our souls suffer many things. They groan, as does the rest of creation (Romans 8:21-23), as we await the redemption of our bodies.
Romans 8:18 - 19
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.
2 Corinthians 4:9-12
9 [We are] persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
Romans 8:21-23
21 ...the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.
