Wait for It

the difference a morning can make

There’s a moment implied in the New Testament which, since I fell in with followers of Jesus in the 1970s, has been like a grain of sand on the lip of an oyster that hasn’t found its way in and taken hold.

I refer to the grand vision tucked into a tiny verse in Saint Paul’s letter to believers living in Rome: “For the creation awaits with eager expectation the revealing of the sons of God” (8:19). One translation has “waits on tiptoe” for it, which I’ve always liked. Bottom line, it’s a magnificent visionary image of anticipation, awaiting the consummation of Creator’s intention for the entire cosmos. Sadly, I have known of no happy cultural equivalent that mirrors the joyful moment of such a revelation or feeds my sense of anticipation for it.

Until now.

I’m sure most of us internet users have come across heartwarming social media clips or good news stories that make one’s eyes well up with happiness. We are saps, aren’t we? I am, anyway. And one particular type of clip gets me every time: the flash mob that transforms a shopping mall into a concert hall. Yesterday, it happened again, and as I sat there on my couch, all alone and on the verge of sobbing, it occurred to me: this is that!

This is what?

This is a picture of the revealing of the “sons” or children of God. There’s that one performer who starts playing her violin, an ordinary busker with her violin case open on the floor in front of her, a cross section of humanity passing by or lingering unobtrusively to enjoy the moment. Soon there’s a loose crowd attending to her performance. Which is when things starts to happen—other performers, heretofore present as fellow mall shoppers, break out their instruments and join the pioneer performer. The faces of children and adults begin to brighten with surprise, even recognition of what’s actually happening. No one sees the chamber choir descending the escalator, but when they begin singing, jaws drop, smiles become grins, tearducts being producing. Even as type this….

Good lord, I am a sap among saps.

Individually, each artist is a musician who has been working for years alone and in small groups to make such music as may transform the ordinary, mall-going experiences of people like their moms and dads, their neighbors, their friends and beloved others, even their enemies. Enter joy. Enter forgetting where you are or why you came there. And, the last note having sounded, enter wild hoots and extended applause.

Can you see it? The whole of creation overcome with joy at the revealing of Creator’s ordinary children? Can you hear it? The music, the gasps of surprise, the applause? And then you discover that you know the music, too, and join the moment, adding your joyful voice to the chorus of every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea—all together singing for all they’re worth. And is that high humming I hear from the vibrations of one-dimensional strings of energy? That low drone from the resonant throats of galaxies?

Heck, works for me.