Weeping Angel Animation by CyberDrone on DeviantArt
You know, sometimes the current political campaign reminds me a bit of that famous Dr. Who episode, “Blink.” If you have never seen it, it would take too long to explain. Suffice it to say that there were creatures that looked like an angel statue, but when you blinked, they moved with amazing speed to try to attack you. Blink two to three times, and you could be dead. The catch was that they could not move so long as you (or anyone else) actually stared directly at them.
This presidential campaign is beginning to remind me a bit of that episode. It is as though I go to work and come out only to find that what I had thought was accurate about the candidates is now completely changed. I go in thinking Hillary is ahead, only to come out after work to Trump is even with her. I go to bed with Hillary won the debate, only to wake up and find out that Hillary is worried about a very low African-American turnout in Florida. Like the episode, every time you blink, what you think to be true has become false. Reality becomes a changing nightmare in which no one can tell what is actually true.
Just like that episode, if you blink too much, this presidential campaign will eat you alive. The rumors, the analyses, the innuendos are all passing by in the blink of an eye, only to be replaced with a new cycle of words that equally terrorize you, if you let them. Solid ground is hard to find and both candidates are found unlikable by a sizeable percentage of the population. I only wish that I could get into the Tardis and fly off to another land and another time.
Nevertheless, it is at those times that I have to remind myself that there is a place to which I can go whose inside is bigger than its outside. No, that was not a Dr. Who idea. Dr. Who’s writers copied it from another writer, C.S. Lewis. And even C.S. Lewis got the idea from the way in which the Early Church Fathers referred to Mary’s womb in wonderment crying out their lack of understanding of the infinite God inside a completely finite woman. Her womb was bigger on the inside than on the outside.
There is a place to which I can go whose inside is bigger than its outside, and that is the Church. When I step into the sanctuary, I have stepped into Heaven. I am not saying that I have stepped into the antechamber of Heaven, as I have read some writers saying, but rather, I have stepped into Heaven itself. I am in the presence of God in a special way. His throne is among us. And, though my earthly eyes may only perceive a dim and small sanctuary, my heavenly eyes know that God is on his throne and that I stand before it.
That, I think, is where I need to make sure to abide this dreadful election.
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