Recently as I was sitting working away, I glanced up and looked out the window and immediately noticed a dent in the side of my truck. My first door ding. Oh no!
While I don’t idolize my truck, I do like it a lot. It is just over 2 years old and I still had yet to have someone open their car door into the side of my truck, leaving their mark with the notorious "door ding." You see, I intentionally park towards the back of parking lots. I walk further distances to avoid having the side of my car plastered in dents. My old car was covered with evidence of careless reminders that I should have parked somewhere else. (The joys of living in a major metro center.)
But there it was! My first door ding.
As I sat looking at it I couldn't decide if I was upset at myself for parking close to the building or the person that hit it. I sat and wondered if I should just keep working or go out and inspect the damage. After a few minutes pondering the situation, I decided that I would go out and investigate further.
When I got closer to my truck, I lost the spot where the dent was. I walked back and forth along the side of my truck trying to find it. I moved my head closer and further away from the side of the truck to see if I could spot the dent. "Surely it can't be that hard to find," I thought to myself. I even tried looking from above the door and getting low to see it from different angles, but I just could find the dent. Where was it?
Puzzled, I went back inside to look at it from where I had initially seen it. As soon as I looked out the window, there it was, right in the middle of the door. I went back outside to see it with the spot locked into my mind. About a foot to the right of my door handle and down about 16 inches. Only when I got outside for the second time, I didn't see it again. I couldn't find it.
Was it there or not? Perplexed, I went back inside. Just then the car that was parked next to my truck on the same side I was seeing the dent, backed out. As soon as the car was gone, so was the dent. What? How does that happen?
The light was shining off their car in such a way, that it looked like my truck was dented. Once the strange reflection from the other car was gone, I could no longer see what I thought was a dent.
This brief, strange experience reminded me of a scripture -
1 Corinthians 13:12 (NET)
"For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known."
This verse of scripture is towards the end of a chapter dealing all about love. Paul is trying to show his audience that real love is the opposite of selfishness. Just as popular culture today tries to skew out view of what love should be, the same happened in Paul's day. The common factor is that people are selfish in their very nature.
Paul was trying to show his audience that even the greatest love expressed on this earth is but a pale comparison of the love that will be experienced when Jesus comes again.
At that point, things will be restored and renewed to a perfect state. A state that none of us alive today have experienced. In fact only Adam and Eve got to experience that perfect world and even then it was only for a limited amount of time.
This means that what we see now around us, no matter how good, is only a reflection of what was at the beginning and what will be.
Revelation 21:4 tells us,
"He (God) will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist any more—or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist.”
The "former things have ceased to exist." Those are the things we are living in now. Those are the things we experience daily. But those things, no matter how good are only a strange reflection of the spiritual realities that God has in store for us. It only gets better from here.
Knowing this makes us able to endure the door dings in our daily lives. One day everything will be made new and we won't be seeing things though a "mirror indirectly," but we will see our God and Creator "face to face." He will help us to understand the things that we have lived, make sense of the things we have seen and finally experience the love we were created to feel.
Keep looking out the window, but understand that the things you see are only a reflection of what is to come!
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