Tomorrow we will celebrate the life of “Miss Marguerite”. She died last Saturday at the age of 101. Think of all the changes she saw in her life! She lived under 19 of our 44 presidents. Her mother, born in Arkansas during reconstruction after the Civil War, was a relative of Robert E. Lee and her daughter, Marguerite, got to see our first African American president inaugurated. She taught Sunday School until the age of 92 when the distributor cap ’mysteriously’ disappeared from her car and was unable to be replaced. She had a hand in building and painting all the buildings on our church campus, including our new sanctuary, which she painted from her wheelchair just after her 100th birthday. One of the last times that I was with her when she was lucid, we talked about all manner of things. It was hard because her hearing was nearly gone. It was a bit like we were each in conversation with ourselves, but I remember her saying with conviction and a measure of joy, “Eugenia, this too shall pass.”

Sometimes that is the best of news, isn’t it? On those days when our hearts are breaking, our spirits flagging, our bodies rebelling and our checking accounts dwindling, it can be good news indeed to know that it won’t always be like this. On other occasions, though, we long for nothing more than to hang on to the precious and powerful moments of our lives, those moments when colors are brighter, smells sweeter and love more palpable. It is in those moments that I most identify with Peter in this week’s story of the transfiguration. I have had many moments when I wanted to cry out, “Let’s just build a tent and move in right here.”

But that is not the way of this life. We are never static even if we feel as if we are stuck in the mud. We are a part of a mighty stream of divine love that always moves us toward that which is finer than we can ever imagine, even if that movement includes confusion, loss or sorrow. The thing that is so dear to me about this story is that Jesus gives Peter exactly what he asks for, only in a way he did not imagine. All Peter really wanted was to stay in the presence of divine love and will. All he really wanted was to stay close to God, closer than he had ever been. Even though he did not get to encamp in that mountaintop experience, he got something finer. He got to follow Jesus, to go with him to the cross and beyond. He got not only to dwell with God but for God to dwell with him. He just didn’t get it on his own terms. It is just the same for us. We may not get to freeze time, but what we do get is eternity.