I don't understand the mystery of emotions.  And that lack of understanding is inherent in their design.  Emotions are great for clouding judgment, knowledge and understanding until time gives those back to you.  I learned that lesson the hard way (a few years ago) - I'd bet even harder than most of you reading this.  I've felt emotions of all kinds - happy and sad, great and small, normal and weird; I've even gone through a period of several months with no emotions at all.  I've also spent many years doing all I could to hide my emotions and have only just broken out of that phase two years.

Sure enough, it was brokenness and depression that led forth the rebellion of my heart against its walls.  For just over a year, it was darkness and despair that ruled my life and brought the deepest emotions I'd ever felt in my life.  I didn't even know the human body could handle such things as failure, rejection, divorce, abandonment, loneliness and hatred all within a two month period.  (Our capacity to handle such things now goes to show the depth in capacity of our sinful nature.)

In that time, had I a better knowledge of the scriptures, in addition to 2 Corinthinas 1:8b-9, I would have prayed Philippians 3:10-11 as my theme verses: "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead."  Of all those terrible things going on in my life - "I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ" (3:8).  But what does it mean to "gain Christ"?  How does one do that practically?

God has been laying this verse on my heart for quite some time:1 John 4:20 - "Anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen."  Add to that John 3:12 - "I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?" and Ephesians 5:32, about husbands and wives - "This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church."  These all point to the exact same thing: God intends earthly things to parallel the spiritual realm as a guide to help us understand heavenly things.

Now, of all the crap I've dealth with - wounding enough to warrant psychiatric help for some - there has been one hope that I have which lets me consider them rubbish that I may "gain Christ."  Do I really know what it feels like to "gain Christ"?  I can't say that I do.  Two sentences later, Paul is even saying, "Not that I have already obtained all this" (3:12).  But what I do have is a parallel - a bridge.  Her name is Jessica Hayes.  She is the one who shows me a silhouette of what it will feel like one day to "gain Christ."  And if the mere silhouette is enough to count all my troubles as rubbish and view my life as a heaven-on-earth, how much greater the full thing?!?

A silhouette is but a mere outline of what we are to look at.  It gives a framework for how the truth is meant to look - and she blows my mind.  How can emotions make any sense when everything in the world is thrown against you along with the darkest feelings the world has to shove down your throat, yet all it takes is one girl who is captivating to her very core for me to "consider them rubbish" and be overjoyed with beatitude.  How much more impossible might it be to understand the surpassing greatness that is "gaining Christ"?  In the third heaven, Paul "heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell."  This might be an extrapolation, but I believe that he felt inexpressible things as well.

That is what happened for me this weekend...