Fragments.

It's a bag of old pictures. There is no rhyme or reason to the collection. Ah, these are pictures of an art competition in the mall that I put together when I was Western Art Educators' person of note. And the next two are of a Christmas door competition design my high school art 1 class constructed that looked like a castle beside a reflecting pond with ice and snow. Wow! It's the Mansfield chinese dragon tiger thing! Oh here are some of one of the marches our church did in the late 80s early 90s. Look! pictures from a mother/daughter banquet at Faith. On and on with art projects and group outings and homecomings and parade floats. Just a few pictures of each thing in sequence. A large bag of fragments of my life, each one important to what was and what I've become. Most of them brought a smile to my heart.

The fragments represent success and failure, times when I understood and some when I was clueless. They cross the boundaries that now I must transverse again, boundaries of friendship and family, honor and anonymity, career and association. They brought me through piano lessons, public art education, several church re-locations, friendships that have remained and friendships that were temporary, triumph and mistakes -some big mistakes.

The fragments document changes in philosophy and emphasis. They mark my personal march into an understanding of grace and the Father's goodness toward all he created.

And they make me realize that in years to come, I will be the Father's daughter. I may not be the same as I am now. Things I hold paramount may be small and insignificant or they may be non-existent. I may move from this life into the next at any time -not because I am already old, but because that is the way of mankind. As long as she and I live, my mother will remain 30+ years beyond me in living and experience. Earth things will always change. I am bound to this earth by my very make-up. On the day that make-up changes, I will no longer be privy to or part of this fallen earth. Until then, this body, this mind, these emotions are earth bound. But my spirit knows.

One thing my spirit has learned is that there are things that do not change. There are constants with my God. The Spirit realm is stable. I can count on what God created me to be. The gifts and callings of God are without change. Yes our place of service may change and some of our applications may advance or even disappear, but our relationship to the purpose of God will not change. 
 There may be a time of life ahead when that is the biggest challenge of my earth life. My physical and mental states may deteriorate to the point when I cannot pursue the callings and dreams God has placed in me. If that day comes, I shall have to trust him more than ever to get through that bog just before the eternal gate.

Another thing the fragments pointed out is that the love of God and family is a stable place. The desire for family and friends is constant. When I visit my mother in the nursing home where she resides in Louisiana, I can see it in the faces and eyes of the people there. Some have lost the recollection of faces and relations, but they need a smile and a hand. They respond to joy and kindness even though everything else is fading away. Somehow I believe that craving, that insatiable expectation is part of the preparation for the next life just past the door they are approaching. God's love is amazing. It is the most enduring and satisfying when you know it, yet he created us to be social beings, to live in families and community. Even in passages about heaven, there is always interaction, purpose, and relationship. These are fragments of this world that I believe will accompany us into the next with God as the cement that keeps it in place.

Those are the insights that I garnered or reinforced in the bag of life fragments I encountered today.