Tip of My Iceberg

As family was slowly leaving our home to return to their personal spaces, we had one more activity to accomplish.

We had four birthdays to celebrate.

January is a big month for celebration for us. Our grandson Nolan was born on January 8, our son, Mark on January 13, and grands Callum and Mack were born hours apart of January 16. Since birthdays must be celebrated and time was limited, we determined to have one huge bash to celebrate all four.

Balloons are a must for parties. We’ve had one of those air blowers where you attach a balloon and it fills it within seconds. You need to keep a close eye on it because they can pop if you leave them on too long. Which we did. Several times. But we managed to fill our desired number of inflated plastic orbs.

The grands got creative after that. They figured out that if they hold their balloons over the tip where air came out, they could shoot them up to the ceiling. Small balls, like ping pong balls, and other tiny, light objects also could be floated up as if they hovered on their own. The joy of blowing up balloons ended with the experimentation of what could be made to fly.

Matchbox cars couldn’t float, no matter how hard they tried.

The boys had more fun with the new way they reimagined the blow machine to work. The giggling was contagious as they managed to float new objects never tried before.

Life is continually being reimagined. Back in the late 1990s, we had to look things up in encyclopedias to find information, but now we have Google and other search engines. Communication was made mostly by phone calls, with the initial mobile phones feeling heavy as bricks. Social media hadn’t been fully birthed yet, but soon Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram would come into existence to change the face of how we receive and communicate information. Influencers were more iconic depending on what sport they played or what movie they starred in. An “app” was short for appetizer.

Life reimagined means life is changing. Some people thrive on change; many would rather see life continue without disruption, without the compromise differences in life cause.

We reimagine how we live each day based on how and what we focus on and what’s important to us. Every day we’re confronted with circumstances we’ve not prepared for or hadn’t anticipated. These force us to make choices we hadn’t counted on.

Jesus came to reimagine life for us in our relationship with the One who created us. He came to offer grace and mercy instead of rules and traditions that the religious leaders held to so carefully. Grace wasn’t a commodity they valued; it meant getting something you didn’t deserve because of someone else’s efforts. These religious people wanted to stick to the minutia of the law which could be measured by what people did.

Jesus came to change who we are through love.

Paul wrote of Jesus:

“I pray that from His glorious, unlimited resources He will empower you with inner strength through His Spirit. Then Christ will make His home in your hearts as you trust in Him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” Ephesians 4:16-19.

Jesus reimagined life with the possibility of love and forgiveness. Rules are necessary to maintain order, but Jesus’ gift was that of paying the price we could never pay with His perfect life.

Try visualizing what life could be life if you knew you were fully forgiven and freely loved.

That’s a change worth making.