In Other Worlds

 

My cousin has an adopted daughter who is 16 years old. Baby Lilli was born with half her brain missing, due to her birth mother's drug use. Before the adoption, doctors said the baby was blind and deaf, would never know anything, do anything or even recognize family members. And she wouldn’t live a year. My cousin was absolutely convinced the Lord wanted her to adopt this child, and she was delighted with her baby.

You already know, from the beginning sentence, the doctors were wrong on their last prediction. They were wrong on every other one, too. Lilli hears well and can see, though poorly. She knows everyone in her life. After she learned to crawl, she scampered around the house with amazing speed. Due to bone deformity, walking is uncomfortable, so she uses a wheelchair. She has a special understanding of music and alphabet letters. She learned to spell words before she could say them. She made up names for her people. Mine, through a slightly jerky line of logic, which would never occur to anyone else, is “nine five six.” (I’m the only one who got a number for a name.) She can tease others and knows how to annoy her adults (like every kid). Favorite TV shows when she was little were “Jeopardy” and “The Price is Right.” She learned all the childhood poems and songs and all the old hymns. Lilli is severely limited, mentally and physically, but when viewed from the perspective of dire predictions, she has made amazing achievements.

Some acquaintances are put off by her limitations and differences and keep their distance. It takes effort and flexibility to get into Lilli’s world, and, like Dunkin Donuts, “it’s worth the trip.” When I have been able to lay down all expectations and accept whatever realities she presented, I have loved visiting Lilli’s world. She likes order, fun, music and peace. She enjoys whatever she is doing, is more skilled than I in her understanding of music and is always learning new things. I enjoy entering her life.

I can enter Lilli’s world by choice, but she cannot enter mine. Though our worlds seem different (to me but possibly not to her), Lilli and I live in the same world. But Jesus, Creator and Lord, came from a very different world. He chose to lay down expectations to which He had every right – worship and honor. He chose to enter and accept our reality, most of it inadequate and miserable, all of it less than he deserved. I can’t imagine that He loved visiting our world. But He loved us enough to do it.

The “world leap” that fascinates me is the reversal that’s coming, when we leave this world and enter the one that is now His. We will drop all our current expectations and be given the flexibility to engage in a world we cannot now imagine.  “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived – the things God has prepared for those who love Him – these are the things God has revealed to us by His Spirit.” I Cor. 2:9, 10.

I do not think our usual expectation of heaven is at all accurate – a pretty place where we focus on and fellowship with our dear departed loved ones. I do not understand why we paint that picture at funerals. When my husband’s 17-year-old niece died, her mother said, with true joy and awe, “My baby is looking in the face of Jesus!!” Jesus! He’s the only reason we will be there! He will be our focus, our joy, our life!

“For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” 2 Cor. 5:1 “But someone will say, ‘How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?’ Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain – perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body…  So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”  I Cor 15:35-38; 42-45 “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” 1 Jn 3:2

When we exit this world, we will enter one that is totally unknown to us now, but totally suitable for us and for God. We will see Jesus! What’s more, we will be like Him!! Hallelujah!

--Lynda Shenefield