These Are the Voyages of the Starship Adoption…



“Comparisons are odious.” Here, humorist Oscar Wilde is uncharacteristically blunt. I didn’t expect to be prodded by him, nor that his warning be delivered and confirmed in a bit of light reading on the second 25 years of the Star Trek phenomenon. By such diverse fuel, though, are the warp engines of my transformation engaged.

As Star Trek: The Next Generation has unexpectedly provided the eerily timeless décor of my mental furniture, rearranging its assumptions is thought-provoking. What if James Avery who later played Uncle Phil on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air robustly filled the role of Geordie in place of the tentative, maturing grace that LeVar Burton brought to the role? It could have happened. What if Wesley, the show’s much-maligned boy prodigy, was a girl named Leslie? It could have happened. What if producers insisted on  my initial, adolescent reaction that Patrick Stewart was too old to take the captain’s chair from James T. Kirk?  Patrick Stewart, who went on to be knighted for his work from that commanding perch, was 45 when he began the voyages of the starship Enterprise. That age looks much different from Ten Forward of the ship’s prow of this 44-year-old.

The years are moving at warp nine back here on planet Earth. More unsettling, there is no comforting likelihood we will begin next week’s “episode” returning to last week’s baseline. The challenges my brother and his family face after his real-life traumatic brain injury haven’t subsided at the end of a compelling story arc designed to boost ratings for a while. There is nothing normal about the new normal for them, other than a consistent reminder that the events of an instant can change everything we assume will be perpetually in place. Jostle the brain, wondrous and fragile simultaneously, and neurons firing to pronounce, “hello,” transmute from ubiquitously unremarkable to an occasion for celebration in Heaven and on Earth. My brother’s projections before the accident are nebulous now, and the weight of my 44 years is compounded with the realization.  The star dates go by in a blur.

Since the passing of time wasn’t settling easily on my shoulders when I wrote in February that my wife and I were stalled in our quest to become first-time parents through adoption, the weight of the passage of time can be ponderous six months later. We will lose $10,000 of the money God raised toward adoption, and the combination of goodwill and a good risk of those who gave it to us, if not placed with a baby by September 1. Now would be an outstanding time for the Lord to show His faithfulness and finish what He began. How many chances does He get to combine the theatric display of His glory with solid, commonsense accounting?

Meanwhile, questions are the inevitable echo in the corners of our stubbornly quiet house. Have we made the most of our opportunities to pantomime permanence in what for others is the everyday epiphany of parenthood? Or, as middle-age begins to preclude possibilities, will regret drag on the aerodynamics of what life remains? After all, the Bible teaches us to redeem the time for the days are evil (Ephesians 5:16). It imparts urgency to the human plea that God teaches us to number our days in order to gain a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12).

The same Bible that confronts with sobering admonishment to the lazy or unfocused also lovingly dispenses the grace to bear up under those challenges. As I continue in the habits God has ingrained into me in spite of anxiety’s distracting buzz, He uses these disciplines as a means of delivering encouragement. As I travel with Tim Keller through the Psalms in his excellent transfusion of daily exposition Songs of Jesus, no commentary on Keller’s part is necessary to deliver the Word’s active ingredient in Psalm 92:12-14. “The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree. He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.  Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall bear fruit in old age; they shall be fresh and flourishing.”

As we wait, then, our dependence on Christ and His righteousness is like the slow-growing cedar’s root system digging deeper over time. Days and weeks, instead of desiccating with a sense of burden, grant us ever more opportunities to be renewed in Him. Our freshness and flourishing from within can contrast with the vulnerability of the aging body, demonstrated in fatigue, wrinkles, or trauma. Our vigor in the Lord, as with Moses, can be evident in the eyes others peer into, and the voice they hear. Our greatest adventures, like those of Sir Patrick Stewart and Jean-Luc Picard, are just beginning, irrespective of comparisons we might make of God’s timeline in the lives of others. Comparisons are draining. Comparisons are distracting. Comparisons, as Oscar Wilde said, are odious. They are also unworthy of the grateful servants of a great God.

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