I went through this abandoned photography phase. Not that I took photos myself (trespass in abandoned locales? No thanks!), but was intrigued by dilapidated buildings. Malls were my favorite—cavernous stores and broken escalators, once bustling and now returned to nature. In my hiking heyday, I loved to find ruins on the trail. I thought of the people who lived or worked there, fascinated that I stood on ground that was once solid.
welcome home!
When left on its own, everything returns to nature. Society itself is temporary; when the shopping malls close, plants crawl through the cracks of escalators and trees burst through floor tiles. It reminds me of the delicate balance life holds, how at any moment it can all crumble. And how quickly it happens—you forget to mow the lawn one week, then two, and suddenly you’re the abandoned lot on the street.
It’s a stark contrast to God. Sometimes I get discouraged, how life is a constant need to maintain. Mow the lawn, wash your hair, do all these little tasks to put off the overgrown and unruly. Eternity isn’t like that. Heaven doesn’t need someone to sweep the golden roads; the angels don’t need a midday nap. It’s easy to get swept up in the anticipation. Why hang around here when a perfect, eternal life is right around the corner? I often wondered this in my pre-Catholic life. Great, I’m saved and going to Heaven. What else is there to do here? Why doesn’t God call us Home right after that salvation prayer?
There’s a kind of beauty in destruction, though. We need this temporary world to understand the perfection of the next. God isn’t just handing out rewards because we say He exists. No, we have to work at it. We have to experience daily life, even if it’s a drag sometimes. We have to wake up, wash our hair, maintain our bodies and homes. We have to work, so that someday we can appreciate the relief of resting in God.
Besides, I still enjoy coming across ruins in the woods. It’s not just fascination with the old and abandoned. It’s also a reminder of God—humans go through cycles of creation and destruction; we’re constantly building and replacing and maintaining our world. But God is the constant, the unchanging. No matter what happens around us, there is comfort in the One that doesn’t change. I think we can appreciate, and cope with, everything else because of that.
