large as this longing

Today I was sitting in my office, spacing out, gazing out the window at the beautiful day outside. Perfectly framed by my bookshelf and dorm fridge, was the brilliant blue sky hovering over the emerald green tree tops. I thought to myself, “How amazingly beautiful. God you’re great!” But as I slipped even further into my daydream, I realized something. How incomplete, albeit beautiful, this view really was. Incomplete because it was only a picture of the real thing. I wasn’t experiencing the sky, the fluffy clouds, the green, with all of my senses. How much better is it to actually be outside; to go beyond the window and into the Realness of the warmth of the sun on my skin, and the smell of the prairie grass as it’s carried by the wind.

This all makes me wonder if life as we know it so far is like looking through a window. What if we’re waiting for more? Maybe life, in its fuller culmination, will be something like stepping outside and using all of one’s senses. Maybe there are more senses than the five we know! And maybe when we get there we’ll have more and better words to say than, “How amazingly beautiful. God you’re great!”