Often when I see the plan of salvation blocked out on a chalk board it is represented as the middle block of three equally sized chunks like this--with 1 being our pre-mortal life, 2 our mortal existence, and 3 our post-mortal eternity:
[ 1 ]
[ 2 ]
[ 3 ]
Granted, it is hard to draw or conceive of something that stretches forever in the past and forever into the future, but I think the following lone period below is a slightly more accurate way of viewing this life. If you imagine that everthing in front on the other side of your screen extending foward infinitely is the future, and everthing on this side of the screen extending behind you is the eternal past, then I think you can put in perspective the length of our mortal lives.
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Sometimes when I feel discouraged about life, I like to think of this image and be calm and realize that we all have an abundance of time and space if we realize it is there.
Furthermore, if my entire mortal life is lived in a time when the church villifies homosexuality this also helps put that trial in perspective. Fortunately it's not that bleak and not that black and white.
ReplyDeleteSince the seventies when I got married, the church has made considerable progress. I could be wrong, of course, but I think that significantly more progress will be made before I make the move to the other side of the screen. In the meantime, I rejoice that we live in a colorful world and that our here and now is not simple a matter of black and white pixels.
In teaching this concept, I've illustrated it before with a piece of yard stretched out from wall to wall of the classroom and a small black ink dot somewhere on that yarn.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reminder of keeping things in perspective. We do see things so limited to "here and now" and "black and white".
Sorry: yard = yarn.
ReplyDeleteGreat insight! Thank you for the reminder.
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