Arms Outspread

All right, so autumn is starting to creep up my back (don’t you just hate August) and this is making me a little pensive. Back to the passage from Hebrews for a little while.

All of these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.

I just read through a biography of Anne Bradstreet, the first American poet (a surprisingly favorite read—quick, fascinating, story-like) and was able to step into the shoes of a Puritan woman in a way that I have never been able to do before. She and her family had a dream, a dream of holiness, a dream that a society could be designed in such a way that every person within its community would bow to the authority of God. They were deeply passionate about this dream, and they believed that this was a God ordained dream. To disregard would be to disobey. For the first time, I realize the immensity of the sacrifice. These people had nothing to gain and everything to lose. They sold everything—property, goods, businesses, lace collars—to buy supplies to live through journey. There would be no money for a return trip.

And of course, they compared themselves to Abraham, and they compared the New World to the Promised Land. This was the dream that was promised to Abraham, though, as this passage indicates, he died without seeing.

Within one generation, the Puritan dream withered. In fact, the dream was tainted from conception because they had to bring outsiders with them because they needed particular tradesmen (doctors, carpenters, etc.) and there weren’t enough Puritan tradesmen to go around. So Idealism bowed to Practicality before they even set sail. Not only that, but their community unity was attacked again and again, not by outsiders as much as by insiders who strayed from the straight and narrow. Each time the community was shaken up by religious or political controversy, another small group would break off and move further away from the frontier, to start fresh and restart the limping dream.

I look at these two stories, of Abraham’s life of faith with unfulfilled promises and the American template of faith: wanting, demanding for the promises to be fulfilled now. I think, what is this faith that we are called to—to be always haunted by the beauty of the dream but to know that it is stamped with the designation not yet? What is this faith that we are called to—to be given the vision, to know the outline of the Garden of Eden, to have glimpses of glory, and yet to be still so far away? Our attempts to hammer in the garden seem to turn in to nightmares.

My question for myself is: will I be patient? Do I have what it takes to stand with the faithful? Am I content enough
To see (and taste and drink and smell)
And welcome (arm outspread)
From a distance.