Soul Happy

Sometimes in life you just need to hit the pause. Hide the cellphone in a closet, unplug the television, starve the senses from all the unbelievable undone going on. Under all that wild and buzzing noise, the latest breaking news feed, the tweets and all that we've never experienced, there is a sweetness waiting to be uncovered. Like a budding crocus, making its quiet entrance after a long, hard and chilly winter, the beauty in these stolen moments, they replenish, refresh and restore what the wild world threatens to steal. Even for a few moments.

My pause came disguised in an old Nike shoe box. Continuing my downsizing project, I retrieved the box from the shelf,  lifted the lid and peered inside. This box housed a plethora of old assorted cards; birthday, anniversary, get well, sympathy, Mother's and Father's day cards. Even a few photographs.  Dating back to the 80's and 90's, notes from our children written and I can see their faces all earnest in their adolescent attempt at loving us though words. These remnants from the past, they washed over me, flooding the heart with precious memories, and I read each line, as if for the first time.

I wonder if God smiles tender, watching us taking a break from all that surrounds, all that hurries us, scares us, makes us mad even. For me that day it was in a shoe box, this flashback gift, freeing me from the burdens of the present, gentle reminders that breathless moments don't necessarily require climbing a mountain or skydiving. Later, I stepped outside, listened to the trilling sound of a bird perched on a telephone wire, one of those original tweeters. And I breathed soul happy.

"All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."

~Blaise Pascal~

Let Heaven Come

I held it nestled between my fingers that day, looking down, my gaze transfixed by the shimmering white in the center of all that red. My ears must have closed tight to what the pastor said, my thoughts focused on the light in that cup, how it shifted with each movement, spreading its iridescent brightness toward the edges of the cup, then back to the center. With each motion of the hand it continued its dance, a spiritual light show. Until I swallowed all that life-pumping hope right down into the center of my scaredness.

I hear the news this past week in my home town, the unfathomable hate and how the sacrificial heroic acts of those three drowned out that slurring rhetoric with their bold courageous hearts. How love is pushing back at all that inky dark hate, shoving its way to the center of attention, and I think about the cup that day.

And the Pope, he gave a gift to our president, a papal encyclical, aiming to share some important news, surely not fake news, but now the deal is undone and parts of the world light up green. States will too I hear, a shared yes to our earth. And my mind, it circles right back to that cup in my hand, and the outrageous truth gleaming in the center that day, A liquid missive from above. Love has already won the battle! The dark will never win! Don't give up, good will still rule over the earth! 

The song we sang that day in church, it runs through my mind all week, much like a long distance runner, a steady rhythm of hope and purpose, of perseverance and prayer. A refrain really, and I hear it like a collective plea.

Let heaven come...

"In spite of all appearances to the contrary, God has a plan for this bankrupt world...this earth of ours, He still wants as a theatre for His grace and glorious direction."

~Helmut Thielicke~