Life seems strange nowadays. In cold rational figures, 20% of our family is missing: one-fifth, one out of five. The daily pattern has the same rythm, sunrise to sunset and beyond, but the resonance has changed.
I ponder this, and it occurs to me that this is yet another way that marriage and family show facet of God to us. The strange gap within me at the departure of a child is somehow reflective of what God feels as His children grow and move forward in their lives. Our children grow up and grow out of the family home, and both the parents and children feel the absence of each other. No matter that the separation is natural, is a good in itself as it allows each to grow further into the person God made us to be. There is a hole inside the parent, and the child feels a chill as she is now exposed to the world.
I struggle to describe this reality, and it remains a mystery. Only God truly knows how I feel now, and He has the same experience as every one of His children goes out into the world, a world with dangers and delights that only He is completely aware of.
And He has also been the child, our Lord Jesus. God chose to separate the Word from the Trinity and become Man. He was born, grew, left home. All these things, God experienced as a human Child and then a Man. Jesus walked the world away from His home, walked among people and in places and into danger, finally even death.
As I think on this, I realize that the emptiness within me is now a place where God can reach further into my soul, bringing me closer to Him and His understanding of the world. The hole is still there, but the edges have been gilt.
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