Relocating To Elfland

Take any person at any point in his or her life, look closely, and you’ll find enough sin, stupidity, and general ugliness to bury (and probably damn) that person. But look again. And, if need be, again. You will see frailty, damage, deep need, and also potential. Sympathy will be called forth, perhaps even real hope. Perhaps even admiration. Who of us has not longed for this second look, when one’s shortcomings are exposed to the world? Who has not stood before a critic’s withering onslaught and thought, “Can’t you see I’m trying? Can’t you see I know I’m falling short? Can’t you see I don’t know what to do?” This is not, of course, how we generally respond on the exterior of things, but our hearts have felt it from early days when childish folly made a parent’s eyes blaze and we felt the lash of deserved rebuke. Many of us have learned to soldier on with little hope of a second look (whence come many veneers in the world). Hardest of all, I think, is to believe that God can look at us this way, not with rigor but mildness, not with righteous scorn but with tender compassion. Yet this is surely the message of the cross: God has stooped to touch the lepers, the eye of infinite grace has fallen on the hateful things of earth, the worthless are strangely treasured, and broken things will forever adorn His house.