EDITORIAL
Longing for Life As It's Meant to Be

Michael A. King

Except for Jonathan Beachy’s dramatic story, this issue of DreamSeeker Magazine mostly doesn’t focus explicitly on Passion week or Easter. Yet I see implicit connections. Passion week and Easter mix suffering and joy, evil and goodness, human frailties and divine surprises. And longing. Because though Easter marks a joyful turn in the story God is telling beneath and above and through us, still so often Easter’s promise seems only partly palpable. The materials in this issue in their various ways evoke longing for more, probe shadows and wounds, and offer glimpses of joy or life as it’s meant to be.

Lauren Deville’s article appears first because she sets the stage with, precisely, her longing for life as it’s meant to be yet so often isn’t. Lisa Weaver reports on her son’s terrifying experience made bearable by one whose faith embraced a fearful boy. Noël King tells a parable of a writer burning with passion to find joy in LIVING, not just whatever his muses want him to transmute into words to fan fame.

Then Ross Bender, David Corbin, and Jonathan Beachy offer a trio of testimonies to human mortalities, frailties, and losses. Their stories lack stereotypical happy endings. Yet, within the shadows of each, hints of Easter’s reminder of life as it’s meant to be can be sensed. Bender finds the courage to speak of what Parkinson’s is doing to him. When his friend gets cancer, Corbin finds bittersweet comfort in remembering their boyhoods. When Beachy loses a child, he realizes arms that long for that child can also hug others.

Deborah Good is not so sure the world as currently organized gives adequate voice to more than a powerful minority, but in her call for the voiceless at least to get a word in edgewise, she echoes the Jesus who preached release to the captives on his way to the cross and beyond. Mark Wenger tenderly tells of the preciousness of time—kairos time—with his parents. Kairos time is God’s time, the type of time that broke into ordinary time at Easter. In my column, I wonder what we can learn from both those who don’t and do attend church about how we treat Sunday mornings as God’s time.

Dave Greiser reviews “Children of Men,” a film which simultaneously paints a picture of a nightmare future world and hints at a reenactment of the Christ story. In his reviews of two books on Scripture, Dan Hertzler draws us into the source of the Christ story. And the various poets in their own ways both probe sufferings and long for life as it’s meant to be.

—Michael A. King