Lingering Mystery

The restaurant door opens, and winter enters the room, accompanying the man in the brown coat and knit cap. A Chevy Citation the color of his coat idles in the lot, waiting for him, exhaling a fog of exhaust into the arctic air.

The man is preoccupied. He shuffles as he walks and his head is bowed slightly, his shoulders stooped. He steps to the counter and mumbles a request, places an order. All this without eye contact. His face is to the floor — he studies his shoes, the brown tile floor, the red rectangle of carpet by the door.

Once, maybe twice, his shoulders rise and then fall in a deep, almost exaggerated sigh. An order number is called — not his — but he lifts his face and his eyes follow the brisk young businessman as he steps to the counter and collects his order. The guy in the suit is all smiles and pleasant banter, optimism and sunny sentiment.

The man in the brown coat and knit cap sighs again, and once more his eyes trace the pattern in the flooring, the details on his shoes.

What is this unseen heaviness that weighs on his shoulders, that pulls his gaze to the floor and holds it there, that draws those deep sighs from his chest?

A number is called. Wordlessly, the man collects his order, shuffles across the floor, steps through the doors and climbs into the idling Citation. He backs out and is gone, leaving nothing behind except the winter chill that entered the room as he left, and the lingering mystery of human concern.

* * * * *

Lord, everyone has a story and every life is laced with concern.

Sometimes the need is severe and humanitarian impulse prompts us: We care for one another. More often, we turn inward, preoccupied with our own troubles, or grateful that, at the moment, life seems, for us, trouble-free.

You were different, Lord. Your agenda was defined by the unspoken needs of others. And you have called us to stoop and serve the outcast, to bear one another’s burdens, to weep with those who weep, to look out for the interests of others, to refresh those who thirst for relief.

Today, Lord, may my eyes see as you see, and may my hands move at your impulse.

Amen.

Who Painted the Sky with Flames?

Someone set fire to the sky, cast a flaming ball over the horizon and ignited the clouds. I stand transfixed as the flame overspreads the early evening sky, west to east. The glow brightens, the blaze intensifies, the color deepens. It is as spectacular a sunset as I’ve seen.

I know why the sky is blue and the sunset red.

Traveling at 186,282 miles per second, it takes eight-and-a-half minutes for the sun’s white light to cover the 93 million miles to earth. But what I see as white is actually a blend of the prismatic colors of the spectrum — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet — and those lightwaves are not of equal length. Red lightwaves are long; blue lightwaves are short.

The sun’s light strikes the clear air of earth’s atmosphere, but that clear air is actually a sea of countless molecules, each molecule only slightly smaller than the wavelengths of visible light. As light enters this sky-sea of molecules, it is scattered, but the long and short lightwaves are scattered unevenly, so that the colors reach me unevenly.

As I look up into the afternoon sky and my eyes gather the scattered light, it is the blue I see most. Later, as the sun moves lower and lower toward the horizon, its lightwaves travel a greater distance through earth’s atmosphere. The short lightwaves of blue are scattered in all directions so that fewer reach me, while the longer lightwaves of red and orange and yellow are scattered less. I see them, and they set the sky ablaze. If the sky is dusty or smoky, the effect is intensified further, and the sunset is spectacular.

It is spectacular now. Even the cloud wisps in the darker eastern sky glow like pink neon.

Too quickly though, the flash-fire of sunset spends itself, and the day’s last dying embers flicker in the purple smoke of twilight.

I know why the sky is blue and the sunset red. Does that make it any less the brushstrokes of the Creator?

God Is Closer Than Your Breath

Lift up your eyes to the mountains of our God.
Lift up your hands in grateful praise.
Life up your voice to the One who always hears you.
God is closer than your breath.
God is closer than your breath.

When you walk through the valley of the shadow;
When your steps take you to the edge;
When your voice echoes back across the void;
God is closer than your breath.
God is closer than your breath.

When your grief is turned instead to dancing;
When you laugh and no longer mourn;
When finally beauty rises from the ashes;
God is closer than your breath.
God is closer than your breath.



Copyright © 2005

Creation Could Have Been

Lord, sometimes I picture what creation could so easily have been, had you restricted yourself.

You could have fashioned a monochromatic world, black-and-white, devoid of color. You might have settled for one type of tree, one kind of animal, one race of people. All food could have tasted the same: flat, boring and odorless. Or even repugnant. It could have been that whatever we touched would feel like sandpaper. Voices could have been monotone, garbled and grating.

Instead of the rhythm of the seasons, year ‘round might have felt like the polar extremes or arid deserts. We might have had 12 months of humidity, seas without surf, nights without sleep. Mountains might have been leveled, a topography without highs and lows, and we might have had emotions to match.

Birds and cats and dogs and cows might all have brayed like donkeys. Snow could have been mauve, and lukewarm. The gauze of a charcoal gray cloud cover might always have hidden the sun and shielded the stars. Life could have been boredom, or even unrelenting pain.

Instead, you were flamboyant, filling our world with beauty and diversity and pleasure. You gave us a home of comfort, then furnished it with lavish amenities.

What made you do it? What motivated such kindness? Why were you so preoccupied with our happiness and satisfaction? Why did you place us in a world of such intricate wonder? We could never fully appreciate the depth and dimension of such artistry in a thousand lifetimes.

Lord, I walk through your world — through my world — and see your kindness. Everywhere I turn, I stumble into grace. And I marvel to think this is just the beginning.

Amen.


© 2008