Unrevealed Until It's Season

An elf update is coming -- probably tomorrow! You'll be quite pleasantly surprised at how well things have gone.

Last weekend we went to Atlanta for Scottish Rite's memorial service. It was really very nice, and I'm very glad that we went. It is hard to believe how many families there are out there who are experiencing just what we've experienced... so many missing their little ones. One of the last things they did was call the names of the children represented one by one... each family would make their way to the front to light a candle in memory and honor of their child. As this part of the service was going on, a harpist was playing and the music was beautiful. She played a hymn that was so familiar and I could come up with one line of it but that was it. Nikki somehow remembered that it was a song sung the very first time we went to a chapel service at Scottish Rite way, way back in the early days... on our very first visit there. I realized that she was exactly right! I tracked the words down and wanted to share them with you here tonight.

Hymn of Promise
In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree;
In cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

There’s a song in every silence, seeking word and melody;
There’s a dawn in every darkness, bringing hope to you and me.
From the past will come the future; what it holds, a mystery,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;
In our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity,
In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.


That first time I heard it, I cried through it... I loved the hope that it promised as we were in the midst of some very, very scary times with Catie. And now... it can still make me cry if I let it... I still love the hope it promises, only now it is a different kind of hope. The hope it offers me now was always there, it just means even more now. There is hope that there will be a dawn in the darkness.... there is the hope of eternity.... there is hope that at the last, there will be a victory (Catie's already gotten that part!)... There is the hope that what we humans so often think is an end, is often just a beginning.

I love the last line in each verse, "Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see." Heaven eyes... 1 Corinthians 13 says that now we see dimly as in a mirror... then, THEN we shall see face to face (Catie already has that too! ;)... Tonight, I was driving home from Bunco and it was so, so foggy. There were places where the fog was so thick, that it seemed you could barely see in front of you. Every once in a while, it would lift a bit and I could see more clearly. When I got home and pulled Iz from her carseat, I happened to glance at the sky. It was clear as a bell, hundreds and thousands of stars as far as I could see (I love living in the country). It struck me that my vision on my drive home is much like my vision here on earth... so often it is tunnel vision, I do not see clearly... every once in a while I get a clear shot of how things really look, but it usually doesn't last for very long. Looking into the Heavens tonight, I imagined that that is what the view is like in Heaven... clear as a bell for as far as you can see. One day, God will reveal all the ways that He has used Catie and brought good from her illness and death and from our missing. What a sight it will be! We get little glimpses now (like with the elves ;), but I can't wait to see the full picture.