The Empty Chair

Like stepping into a long, ongoing battle, our consecration comes at the first realization of the weight of the empty chair.

Death has long wrapped its cold tendrils around our lives being the ever present companion on this pilgrimage. Sometimes it seems as if we can feel the bitter crisp so close and others, somehow distant but always present. Those who live to see that chair began to understand the vacuous moment was given birth because of love.

Those gone before us who remained unloved and unnamed are but a mere passing of the second hand with no thought, action or dead in one’s breast of missing or meaning. Yet, where there is love lost, there is great pain, there is great emptiness. The two are one for now, but a day of reckoning is nigh.

To love is to choose loss. It’s not an if but a when. Our poets, artisan and philosophers sing, paint and talk about the virtues of great love. Our societies incline to wax on about love, its meaning, its joy and triumphs. Our songs turn love into a deity unto itself as we cling onto this tenuous shadow of real love, real relationship.  

Yet, nonetheless, when lost, our love leaves a deep impending scare. The empty rooms once filled with language, laughter, and longing prove the imploding point that something unmeasurable but real beyond imagination has been lost.

Until His Breath carries us away, cradle the moments with those you love.

Cast aside the tyranny of the immediate and bathe in the conflagration of love. It’s but for a mere second when measured against eternity. The love we share gives seed for another place.

When the time comes and you are sitting across that chair, fill it with the memories life has flooded upon you. Lay heavy the moments tied together that made a life.

Burn your candles and honor what was for that shadow shall one day bloom and blossom into His full brilliance.