Proof

 

Proof

The stars are beginning to fade as I make my way down the stairway to the boat dock.  Just ten minutes ago, I stepped out of the cabin door and in one upward look I got lost in the sheer vastness of the sky.  The field of blackness was speckled with stars from horizon to horizon as if they were wildflowers abloom in sparkling petals of light.  It is difficult to not feel little, even insignificant.  It is difficult at times not to feel alone.

In those ten minutes the world turned with incredible speed, yet even more incredibly, unheard and unfelt.  The sky, like a huge kaleidoscope, continues to change patterns.  As if releasing a dove to take flight, only God can release the daylight upwards into the morning.  The darkness begins to melt in the east, and the stars begin to fade.  Standing in it, one wonders if there is a risk of also melting into the coming light.

As I descend down to the dock I become enshrouded in the mist that hovers over the waters.  The lake water is still warmer than the chilled night air, and so the lake appears to be drawn up into the clouds, or maybe more accurately that the clouds have been pulled down to lake level.  Straining eyes can’t make out the shoreline across this little cove that should be only one hundred yards away.  But the mist thickens quickly as if challenging knowledge to revert to belief.  I slip my hands into my coat pockets and a damp chill shudders my shoulders.  Isolation has crept softly into the fog.  I feel in my bones that I am forgotten.

The lake, what very little I can see of it, is calm as if frozen, even though the air is not cold enough yet for that.  And yet, it is the very image of stillness.  I feel a growing need to gasp for a breath, but I resist the urge.  Hold, hold still – and trust.

Out in the mist I hear a splash.  My head jerks upright and my eyes strain into what just a second ago was the threat of nothingness, but in that splash – something else sounded otherness.  It reassures my heart.

You cannot hear the coming of day any more than you hear the footsteps of God as He walks alongside you.  And yet the day continues to come, and I continue to listen.  Now, that near shoreline begins to emerge like Lazarus from the tomb.  Weakly, but surely, the colors of October maples begin to glow like faint embers, almost cold and spent, but now being breathed back into flame.

I hear an eagle, roosted maybe a hundred yards down the shoreline, as he begins to chirp plaintively.  Soon, his call stops.  I know that he has not been silenced back into the silence; my heart is certain that he has taken flight.  His outstretched wings gather him up into the day – this day, this morning.  His wings own the sky like the wings of angels that are also unseen, unheard, and yet oh so real.  Then a piercing scream sounds from high above - yes, he has taken flight.

Then, from behind, the sun’s rays that have gathered altitude like that eagle, rise up over the huge white pine that crowns the ridge to the east and flood the day like a glimpse of Creator’s smile the first time that He saw that it was good.  The mist is soon fully drawn up into the warmth of the light.  In just minutes, my vision is healed.  Color again fills the world as the October shoreline now rims the lake in gold and reds and oranges.  And the lake mirrors the deepest blue of a deep cloudless sky.

My eye catches sight of something in that fresh, new sky.  It is the eagle, wings outstretched and set. He comes toward me with power like the hand of God.  He lands in the white pine on a branch almost immediately overhead.  His excited chirp fills my hearing.  My heart can interpret its meaning:  “Yes, I see you; I see you.  All that I have is yours.”        

“And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” Mathew 28:20

His Peace <><

Deacon Dan