Not This Way
I’ve been meeting weekly with a man who is in hospice over
the last two months. It has been hard
for me to watch him grow weaker. I’m
sure that it is even much more difficult for him to experience his own body
giving out on him. A couple of weeks
ago, he said, “You know.” There was a
long pause. Some of that is that he doesn’t
have the strength for long sentences, but more of it was him taking the time to
reflect and then admit out loud, “This wasn’t in my plans.”
The reality is that God allows things to happen in our
lives that remind us that we never really were in control, even though we
convince ourselves otherwise. But it is
never just a wrestling match, like our own experience of Jacob and the
Angel. There is always more to it. God doesn’t need to see that He is in
control. He knows. What we won’t know, this side of the
resurrection, is how God works through us to call others back into, or deeper
into relationship with Him. There will
be some gesture, some word, some small act in how this man walks this hard
road, or even the reality that someday soon he will no longer be present here
with us, that will significantly impact someone else’s faith journey.
About three weeks ago, only about twenty minutes into
my morning walk, I felt the sunshine that had been warm on my back suddenly
cool noticeably. I turned around to see that
some dark clouds had appeared on the horizon and blocked the sunshine that had
been flooding the morning. I should have
watched for a bit longer because I quickly came to the conclusion that I would
have plenty of time to finish my usual walk at my usual pace. I was still a mile away from home on my
return when the rain hit. I say “hit”
because there were no preliminary sprinkles.
One step and all was dry; the next step the clouds split open and large
raindrops pelted down. By the third
step, all was drenched. But the air and
the rain were warm, so in spite of the inconvenience of being soaked through,
it wasn’t all that bad, even though that last mile wasn’t exactly the way I
planned it.
Yesterday, shortly before supper, ominous steel gray
clouds riding a burst of cold northwest wind, blocked the sun, as if day and
summer were suddenly over. The temperature
dropped another twenty degrees during the night and a hard cold rain pounded
down for a couple of hours. I woke to
listen to it and I was thankful to not be out in it. I pulled up the quilt. Surely there will be some beautiful late
summer, early autumn days to come, but you wouldn’t hope it too loudly if you were
looking out the window with me this morning.
Sullen would be a good one-word description.
I have been watching the hummingbirds this dreary morning. There has been almost a
continuous parade coming to the feeder.
They migrate early; they are among the first birds to leave. I know they are getting ready. Because they are among the first it feels
more in my heart like abandonment than migration. I’ll leave the feeder out until I don’t see
any hummers for a week. How can
something so tiny leave the world so empty with its absence?
His Peace <><
Deacon Dan
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash
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