Breaking Sky
Our little precious and precocious two and three-quarter year old granddaughter said something very profound and delightful on the Fourth of July. As night and darkness enveloped us, we were all sitting up on a grassy hill overlooking a small lake, staring across it expectantly at the dam on the far side, waiting for the fireworks to begin. Little Poppy was waiting with us, and this event, while not technically her first celebration of the Fourth of July, was certainly her first articulate celebration, and she wondered, with eminently good reason, just what all the fuss was about, and why everyone was staring across the glassy water to the far bank. Then it happened, the sky erupted with explosions and colors and sparks of multi-colored fire. It was a grand display, and the crowd awed.
Little Poppy was petrified and indeed horrified by the spectacle. She said simply in a quaking, wavering, nearly tearful little voice: “Coach, the sky is breaking!”. She knew things were amiss, and that of all things, the continual presence of the sky was a source of stability. The permanence of the heavens was at least something upon which a two year old mind could really depend. It was not the noise which frightened her, it was not the gaudy colors or the designs which so startled her, it was rather the more unfathomable prospect of the sky and heavens really and actually breaking apart and passing away, the realization that permanence may not be permanent. It was this realization which absolutely spooked the sweet little child in such a fantastic, cataclysmic, and remarkably profound way. For in one instant, Poppy had grasped her own smallness, the smallness of all of us, and the fact that we have nowhere to hide in the face of a great power beyond ourselves: and the implicit affirmation of the dependency on God’s daily mercies, all in one simple, short phrase: “Coach, the sky is breaking!”.
For Poppy knew, as all little children know, that when something such as the sky “breaks”, there is something coming which is more profound, real, and a matter of such significance as the world coming apart at the seams. Mommies and Daddies might well reassure their children that it is fine for the sky to “break” on the traditional day of fireworks, but only children can imagine the terror of such a notion without holiday, and it is the terror of the end. It is the terror of stopping. It is the terror of conclusion. When something funny happens it is Poppy’s habit and joyous response to command: “do again!”. As obedient grandparents, we stage a repetitive performance of the humorous event, and on these occasions the old always grow weary of the joke before the young ever tire of it. But in the world of the broken skies, it is possible that we may not be able to “do again!”, because we have run out of do-overs and second chances, and it is finished. This is, of all things, something to fear. It is a child’s appreciation of the gravity of the forecast of the apostle Peter in his second letter: “But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. The heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything in it will be found to deserve judgment.” Such a caution should be equally fearsome to adults as it is to children, yet it is not.
Most mature people in our world do not believe in something so fantastical and “mythic” as the end of time unless, of course, they are speaking of something so popular as global warming, but almost all children easily and readily grasp it, because they can grasp their own shortness, both in their stature and in their history. They grasp the miracle of waking up each day to discover something fresh and new. They grasp the wonder and joy of saying: “do again!” and then seeing it done again. They grasp their own silliness of laughing over and over again at the same little joke. They grasp the wonder of daily creation. They grasp their very smallness and their dependency on Mommies and Daddies, and hopefully, through the example of the family, their utter dependency on Christ’s creation. They grasp that bedtime is only a temporary ending, and waking again each day to a dependable sky and heaven which was there before they came is a recurring, repetitive and delicious miracle and gift. They remain, in part, humble in the humblest sense: they are aware of their smallness and the bigness of the heavens. With full appreciation of this small humility, their fear of the end and conclusion is not the irrational fear of the mad cults making preposterous forecasts of the precise time and date of end of the world, but it is rather the quite rational fear, in the sense of profound respect, of something larger, more real and much, much more powerful than they, and they “get it”, even when the unenlightened and over-educated adults around them do not. They understand the lie of their permanence, and the absolute truth and expectation of the future unseen permanent. They understand the joys of the new beginning and the trepidation of the absolute end just as do the very old and very wise before their very end. They grasp the profound reality that God may not choose one day to “do again”; they understand what might happen when the sky “breaks” on some day other than the Fourth of July-
