Winter crept in this year, silent and dry. Sitting at the keyboard, one might dispute the observation. As I write, raindrops are playing catch-up with the deficit. The temperature is 52 and rising.
The National Weather Service speaks of drought as departure. Depending on the micro-climate, we’ve departed seven inches from the norm over the last 90 days. Reports indicate a “fairly active synoptic pattern, with weather systems traversing the area every 4 to 7 days.” Soil conditions don’t favor synoptic patterns devoid of measurable precipitation. Lake pool levels and stream flows suffer, too. Huddling in their drey, squirrels forget their acorn caches. Instead, the pansies appear to be searching.
Sometimes our Christian life endures a dry, cold spell. The motions continue but the heart is searching while hibernating. I remember my own dry season. Good training and rote memory carried me while I lived like the Bible was just a suggestion. Living by my own sight made my relationships and life one-dimensional, but I was blind to the deficit.
Jesus talked about living by sight. Every red word in the Bible rains the message – it is the wrong way to live. But we struggle seeing beyond our own interests into the heart of our brethren, confused by voice tone, misperception, misconstruction and prejudice. We colonize our history with self-perception. Is a heart so hard to find or to be found?
What does it take to see beyond our limitation? Albert Edward Day says, “That (our own interest) is a persistent failure of the unemancipated consciousness. It can be so preoccupied with lesser realities that it does not sense the presence of the Divine Reality surrounding and sustaining it.” Day suggests the “what” is a collision with reality, awakening us to God himself. I might suggest “when” is an equal, if not weightier, more pressing question.
When will we see beyond? Perhaps when we are not so preoccupied with the guttural translations of our own sight. History, recent and atavistic, peers into our deficit and departure. We inch forward only to move backward.
The apostle Paul answers. “That he would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge…” (Ephesians 3: 16-19).
I wonder if I will live long enough to remedy my faults. I wonder if that’s even the goal. What are the red words telling me? And am I listening?
The short-term forecast is for rain. The long-term prediction is pessimistic. So, it’s good to see the rain. Spring is cheering for it.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to see beyond the winter.
More red words are forecast.
“Those who have ears to hear, let them hear” (Matthew 11:15).