Seeing the Eternal in the EverydayA football game, a traffic light, and one of the things I love most about my husband.
One of the things that first drew me to Don before we were married, back in our college days, was how we could talk about an ordinary subject, like his latest football game, and he would always have a spiritual application. For example, he was a running back, and when he was being chased by opponents down the field, he said it was like the devil trying to tackle you and take you down. You had to anticipate his moves and work to actively avoid them. That’s just one instance, but he would relate everything to the spiritual realm. That quality attracted me immensely because I had specifically prayed for a husband who kept God always in his thoughts. Of course, the Lord reminded me that if I wanted such a husband, I needed to be a young woman who kept God in all her thoughts. 😉 I distinctly remember that conversation with the Lord, and it seemed amazing to me when I started dating Don in my senior year and discovered that he was that kind of man. I fell in love with that attribute about him first. Of course, I knew, in theory, that God had made me for one particular man, to help him follow and serve the Lord on our earthly journey together. To comfort, bless, and meet his needs in every way I possibly could. But I was genuinely amazed to discover that God had answered such a specific prayer, and that the very quality I had asked for would become one of the things I treasured most about my husband. I won’t try to pretend that Don Berg is perfect, nor that he is married to a perfect wife. I’m not about to claim either, and you’re certainly not gullible enough to believe me if I did! However, I will say with sincerity that I feel blessed in the deepest parts of my soul to have been given the role of Don Berg’s wife by the Great Designer. For more than 36 years, he has continued to be a man who thinks about God daily, immerses himself in God’s Word, and looks at the world through the lens of the spiritual realm. David’s words beautifully express the importance of this habit of keeping the Lord at the forefront of our thoughts.
You may wonder what has brought on this reflective missive. It’s not our anniversary or any special occasion. I’m a little bemused myself, but my thoughts started travelling down this path when my brother-in-law, Jim, delivered a challenge to me earlier in the week. He mentioned my last newsletter about The Final Room analogy and then shared an idea about an analogy he’d been thinking about. As he was driving to work, he noted how some people see a green light and start slowing down in case it turns red, and other people see the green light and speed up, hoping to get through it before it turns red. Jim shared one spiritual application and then challenged me to contemplate the idea and write an article about it for an upcoming newsletter. I’ve accepted the challenge and, Lord willing, will be writing about it next week. I’ve been ruminating on it for the last couple of days and have some solid thoughts, but I want to let them simmer a bit longer and see what the Lord teaches me as I talk it over with Don. But for now, these ponderings took me down memory lane as I thought about this idea of looking at the earthly and temporal and seeing past it to the heavenly and eternal. I realised that while I learned some of this ability at the feet of my beloved mother, I learned most of it at the feet of my beloved husband. Of course, not every ordinary event has some hidden spiritual meaning. That’s not actually what I am saying. Instead, what I’ve learned is that even the simplest things in life can turn our thoughts to the Lord and remind us of the truths of His Word if we are willing to look for them. My heart is grateful and full that I’ve been blessed so much in this life to have my nearest and dearest not only share my love for the Lord Jesus, but also encourage me to keep my eyes focused on things eternal. We are living in a time when this discipline is more important than ever. It’s easy to lose focus, get discouraged, or become weary as we sometimes feel we are trudging through the muck of this world. The Apostle Paul reminds us that there is so much more to life than what we can see with our physical eyes.
Looking beyond the horizon and seeing the lights of glory somehow allows me to recognise the eternal significance in the seemingly insignificant things of everyday life. What spiritual application would you make of the red-light, green-light challenge? I’d love to hear your thoughts. P.S. Is there someone in your life who has helped you learn to see things from an eternal perspective? Perhaps this would be a good week to tell them how much that means to you.
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