The final chorus of the 1967 Shel Silverstein’s song, “The Unicorns,” later made popular by the Irish Rovers, reads as follows:
You’re never gonna see no unicorns.
The song says that God made unicorns at the time He created the other animals and that they were His favorites owing to their beauty. However, when Noah’s flood came, the unicorns didn’t make it on the ark. And that’s why today there are no unicorns.
The poetic truth of that notwithstanding, some of us spend the greater portion of our lives believing in unicorns, hoping against hope that the beautiful perfection they embody will come to the fore in our lifetimes. Fruitlessly we think that we will discover it or better still, bring it about.
Last week, as I was cleaning out a badly neglected room, I found hanging on the wall, a lovely framed artist’s rendering of a unicorn. I don’t know why I even had it or when it was acquired. For a then-undiscovered reason, I decided that it was time to give the unicorn away to my 7-year-old granddaughter as she is in a “unicorn period.”
Usually, I am loathe to throw things away, and the discard weighed on my mind. Upon reflection, I wondered if my giving away the unicorn was less for hygienic reasons and more for psychological ones. Was I just tired of looking at it, or had I finally quit believing in unicorns?
Could it be that the Apostle Paul wrote about unicorns millennia before Shel Silverstein? Let me explain and re-frame the question beginning in the theological and ending in the practical.
In the famous chapter on love, I Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul wrote:
Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 1 Corinthians 13: 8-10 NASB.
The perfect has been variously translated by scholars much more learned than I. However, may I suggest that in a sense, the perfect could refer to the unicorn?” To explain this bizarre translation, may I submit the following?
Some of us erroneously believe that the perfect will come in our lifetime, a time when everything will be fixed, all the ills of the world will be healed, and all of the mean people will be changed into veritable angels. We will experience Heaven on earth – Nirvana.
Experience, hard-won and scarred physically, emotionally, and spiritually dictates that this is not the case. This is a difficult pill to swallow because to come to the realization that this is not the case is to admit to ourselves that we are failures, that nothing we have done counts for anything in a lasting sense, and that the world will be as it is when we are gone – unchanged and unapologetic. That conclusion compels us to abandon our belief in unicorns.
Or…
To conclude that we won’t fix everything is to come to the “grown-up” realization that we are human. We are not God. We did not, in fact, create anything, we have no control over anything, we cannot fix anything.
The Apostle finishes 1 Corinthians 13 thusly:
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; [but] when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 1 Corinthians 13:11-13 NASB.
In his earlier life, Paul believed in unicorns, but when he met the LORD that day on the road to Damascus, his eyes saw the world differently forcing his beliefs to make a radical shift. More importantly, Paul saw himself differently. He realized that he was a broken man living in a fallen world, knowing with the prophet Isaiah, that he was living “among a people of unclean lips…” This realization came only because his new “eyes [had] seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” Isaiah 6:5 NIV.
But God didn’t leave Paul (or Isaiah for that matter) mournfully singing the song from “Hee Haw,” “Gloom, despair, and agony on me; Deep dark depression, excessive misery…”
Rather, God gave Paul, Isaiah, and us a vision of reality, the reality the sense that He, God, is in charge, we don’t have to try to be. It’s not our job to create, control, or fix anything. It’s our job only to look to Christ and to realize that “13… now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13 NIV.
Jesus said,
Come [unto] me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30 NIV.
When we allow God to give us the realization that an earthly unicorn, ie. perfect peace achievable through the efforts of people, including us, is an illusion, He shows us that “when the perfect (Christ) comes” there will be “peace on earth [and] goodwill toward men.”
Obviously, that time is not yet come, BUT IT WILL COME in God’s time. All we have to do is to love Him. How do we do that? By loving our fellow people.
Again Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, [the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the strangers, and the prisoners,] you did it for me.” Matthew 25:40 NIV.
It is true that we do not live in the “Age of Aquarius” with “sympathy and trust abounding” when “peace will guide the stars.” No, we live in a better Age, the Age of Christ, the King. The “now and the not yet.”
Believing that we live in a better age is infinitely superior to the belief in unicorns because it is reality, not fantasy. Christ’s reality renders that of man not only a lie but an unworthy lie. Realizing the truth, we can sing with Horatio G. Spafford:
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
This is my prayer for you today.
johnthebaptist15 