This Is The Way It Should Be

Riding my bike along the coast, I saw an osprey carrying a small fish to her nest. I imagine the bird feeling the life squirming in her claws and thinking, “This is the way it should be.”  The fish probably didn’t think so.  At the same time, I was listening to the first bars of a song on my I phone, but because of the wind, I could not identify the song for the first few seconds. Then it kicked in, Susanne, sung by Judy Collins. Once I knew which song it was, I got my claws into it. “This is the way it should be,” I said out loud with the beach and the sky as kind as the blue eyes of my kindergarten teacher.

When we hear a song the first time, we do not enjoy it as much as study it. When the music makes its second or third round, we enjoy it because we know what to expect.

There is something about getting our claws into something we expect. When we hear exactly what we expect to hear, and it is a song that speaks to our deep desires, like “the tea and oranges that come all the way from China,” we come alive. We are carrying life or life is carrying us.

Now here is my theory from the osprey and Susanne: we will not be disoriented in our first few seconds in heaven because somehow we expected it. That is why we are always yearning for more here. Nothing in this life satisfies us to the max. We know there is a song so beautiful that if we heard it now, we would explode into pieces like fireworks. But once we open our eyes and our ears in heaven, we will say, “This is the way it should be,” as we clutch fistfuls of life.

Susanne by Judy Collins

Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night forever
And you know that she’s half crazy that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China
And just when you want to tell her that you have no love to give her
She gets you on her wavelength and lets the river answer
That you’ve always been her lover

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you think you’ll may be trust her
For she’s touched your perfect body with her mind

And Jesus was a sailor when He walked upon the water
And He spent a long time watching from a lonely wooden tower
And when He knew for certain only drowning men could see Him
He said, “All men shall be sailors then until the sea shall free them”
But He Himself was broken long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

And you want to travel with Him
And you want to travel blind
And you think you’ll maybe trust Him
For He’s touched your perfect body with his mind

Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river
You can hear the boats go by you can spend the night forever
And the sun pours down like honey on our lady of the harbor
And she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you trust her
For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind

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ABOUT TEAM MCMILLAN:

In 1994, the McMillan family traveled to the kidnapping, murder, and drug capital of the western hemisphere to plant a church and a foundation. God thought Medellin, Colombia a good place to raise a family. And turns out He was right (as He usually is). It became a very large family: The church, Comunidad (Community), is now the largest church in Medellin with over 8,000 members, the Foundation, Viento Fresco, cares for over 150 high-risk children, and a non-profit coffee shop, New Hearts Cafe, serves cups of caffeine and the love of Jesus to thousands of college students.

God is doing so much in Medellin, and we write about here on the Teammcmillan.org blog!

THERE ARE FOUR WAYS TO GET INVOLVED.

• Become a prayer partner.
• Donate to Team McMillan via our Mission South America Paypal.
• Buy Andrew´s new book on Amazon The Safest Place on Earth.
• Join us in Medellin for a Missions Trip.

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