Fairy Tale Dreams and Seeking God's Grace

I love reading, and I love deep thinkers, but occassionaly, I get frustrated with the feeling that it is all well and good in theory but I don't seem to be able to live my life in the deep way in which they say it should/could be lived. That's why I love moments like tonight....when a thought which I found good and interesting becomes a reality.

This evening, my sister and I watched The Prince and Me. If you haven't seen it, the basic plot is that the prince of Denmark doesn't want to face the pressures of being the prince, comes to America "undercover" as a college student, falls in love, gets discovered by the paparzzi, has to go home to Denmark, and takes the girl with him. His father is ill, passes on the crown, he proposes, and all of the sudden the farm girl from Wisconsin is being trained in the royal ways so she can be a good queen of Denmark. As we were watching the movie, I found myself thinking, "How cool would that be, to just have this regular, humdrum life in the rural Midwest, going to school with great aspirations about what you are going to do with your life, and all of the sudden, you are becoming royalty." Now, obviously, this is not something I realistically dream about happening, but for a few moments, I found myself regressing into childhood fairy tales.

Just now, I was reading a book titled "Come Thirsty" by Max Lucado. In Chapter 3, titled "When Grace Goes Deep," he tells the story of Mephibosheth, the crippled descendant of Saul who was invited to David's table. Lucado does a wonderful job of taking a familiar story and telling it in a way that grants a new persepctive. Here, I don't think I can summarize it better than he says it:

"Acquainted with its streets? If you've been dropped, you are. Dropped from the list. Dropped by a guy. Dropped by the team. Dropped off at the orphanage. And now you walk with a limp. People don't remember your name, but they remember your pain. "He's the alcoholic." "Oh, I remember her. The widow." "You mean the divorced woman from Nowheresville?" You live labeled.
But then something Cinderella-like happens. The king's men knock on your Lo-debar door. They load you in a wagon and carry you into the presence of the king. You assume the worst and begin praying for a nonsnoring prison cellmate. But the servants don't deposit you on the jailhouse steps; they set you at the king's table. Right above your plate sits a place card bearing your name. "And from that time on, Mephibosheth ate regularly with David, as though he were one of his own sons." (2 Sam 9:11)
From Lo-debar to the palace, from obscurity to royalty, from no future to the king's table. Quite a move for Mephibosheth. Quite a reminder for us. He models our journey. God lifted us from the dead-end street of Lo-debarville and sat us at his table. "We are seated with him in the heavenly realms." (Eph 2:6)"

Ok, where is all this going? Reading this reminded me of what I had read/posted earlier (See "The Beauty of God Manifest in the Beauty of His Creation). The longings and desires we have are longings that God has put in us to point us to himself. We have desires in this world that cannot be satisfied because we were made for another world. Little girls' fairy tale dreams are not wrong or far-fetched, they are a worldly desire that reflects a human longing to be picked up out of this mangled trap of sin that we have set ourselves in and to be set down at the table of God. They are a desire to go from sinners to saints, from ordinary to extraordinary, from crippled and in pain to healed and sitting at a table with a lover so passionate our finite minds will not understand the depth of his love while we remain in this world.

This realization struck me tonight because it is something I have read about which has now been solidified in my mind, having been given a real-life example of exactly what these great thinkers are trying to express. It was kind of a cool moment for me.