I think there’s only so much beauty a soul can hold.  We vacationed in the majestic Tetons this July.  Again.  And again, God came and met me there.  It is for me a thin place.  A place where the distance between Heaven and Earth, between my not knowing God and my knowing him, is whisper thin.

One day while there, I wanted—no, I needed—to just go and lie down on my bed.  Maybe read.  Maybe just rest but certainly rest my eyes.  I was filled; I could not drink in any more beauty.  Not for a while, at least.  In my beloved humanity, I can only hold so much. 

But then I rest or forget and become thirsty for some more.  I am, after all, a leaky cup.  And on this trip, this vacation to hallowed ground where we have gone each summer for the past sixteen years, I had my husband, all my sons, and my new daughter with me.  I wanted to be present—to drink in every moment.  And by God’s grace, I did pretty well.  Not perfectly, no.  But pretty well.

See, I never want to lose those days we had of beauty and laughter.  We shared in adventure.  It was a taste of all that I long for, and I didn’t want it to end.  But it did.

One of Robert Frost’s most famous and poignant poem’s last, aching line is “nothing gold can stay.”  It feels like that.  Childhood passes.  Vacations end.  Conversations come to a close. Friends move.  Seasons change.  It doesn’t stay.  Not here.

But my friend Cherie puts it like this: these golden moments of joy, connection, and laughter—these holy moments where we feel so alive tasting what is best in this life—don’t merely pass.  They pass straight into eternity.  They last.  They last forever.

All is not lost in Christianity.  Actually nothing good is lost.  We get life now and Life forever, and we will remember and taste and share and it will be good beyond our reckoning.  So, I am back from the Tetons.  But in a way, I never left.

My soul holds the beauty.  And in Heaven, my soul will be able to hold so much more.