Friday, June 30, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Storm
You who fear the Lord, you who walk in his ways, you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork. Blessed shall you be and favored.
Outside my picture window they say the wind is blowing 80 miles per hour. The buzzing thunderstorm warnings burn up my phone. I hear the thunder. Lightning strikes, but far enough away. I love these storms.
Inside my picture window I listen to stories, sometimes from folks who want to dive deep inside themselves but can’t, and sometimes from folks who dive so deep they have trouble seeing the way out. So many of us trying to find the right place to put our feet down.
There. That’s real. That’s true. That hits the spot.
It’s tempting to invite others to join me on my spot, but they almost certainly have a different spot. Perhaps they have not yet found it. And I think how strange it is to be young and feeling shoved between knowing it all and knowing … nothing. Help! Find me something so I can rest, or nest, or maybe self-medicate, or burst into a whole new world.
Or is that the whole new world bursting in on me?
How about Austin’s South by Southwest (SXSW) premier of the 2022 movie Everything Everywhere All at Once? What a great title. Here, have one of those bagels with a schmear, and watch the movie. Squirm in your seat. Wonder who the heck you are anyway?
A leper did homage to Jesus and said, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.”
Can I settle into settling for a semblance of truth, real reality, solid ground? This might be all the particular personality God gave me will allow. God? What are you doing? Just let me breathe, and my heart beat, and my mind race till it’s quiet, kind of, and then I can be a little free to  … pray/chant/dance/rest/sleep. Perchance to dream.
Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him and said, “I will do it. Be made clean.” His leprosy was cleansed immediately.
The strong winds have died. Birds sing in the back yard. They are not dead, that was only a rumor associated with heavy hail. John Muir sat in a nook he had set apart in a large Yosemite oak, and watched the thunderstorms when they rushed across his path. Like the birds, when the storm passed, he sang.
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God the Almighty. Walk in my presence and be blameless.”
And really, folks, John Muir died in bed age 76 of pneumonia in a hospital. Not struck by lightning in that amazing, ancient tree.
Today’s storm was no worse than the storms in 1885. I can decide which tree I’ll climb, which I’ll sit in, and how long I’ll stay up there as the thunderclouds gather in the west.
(Genesis 17, Psalm 128, Matthew 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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