Perfection

{Note:  Computer problems nixed last night’s post. My apologies.}

What is a perfect life?

This weekend we are all over at my sister’s for various family events. It is a busy, rocking household under normal conditions, but with grandparents, cousins and other relations all present, “plan” is even more of a four letter word.

The living room is strewn with toys and clean-up consists of shoving the mess into a corner to reduce tripping and breakage. There is a known set of activities, but the logistics change without notice, like cloud formations on a windy day.

The adults finally put the kids to bed, and collapse around the living room to tiredly visit, conversations prolonged because we are too tired to get up to go to bed until the ridiculous has become profound.

As I, the last one sitting, look around the living areas, I see that in fact, they really are “living areas”—areas where life occurs, where people interact both positively and also with friction, where signs of their living persist after they dissipated to other areas in sleep.

It is not clean, nor is it neat, but that place has become sacred because of the living that has occurred there. We tend to think of perfection as some kind of order, a discipline where ‘everything has its place’ and there is a time for ‘all things under heaven.’ There is truth in this, but this kind of order is merely the skeleton, a set of dry bones, waiting for flesh and spirit to incarnate, innervate and inspirate.

God’s idea of perfection seems to be too organic for mere function, too disorganized for mere order. I get the sense that He is more concerned with our connection with each other than whether the toys are put away in the right containers as soon as we are ready to move to the next activity. That has a role in our life, but I’m not sure true perfection has that on its list of essentials.

Perhaps perfection is more curious about if our interactions have drawn us closer to Christ.

SDG