Oops!

This is what I get for experimenting with existing stuff.  In my haste to figure out how to put pictures in with my posts, I succeeded in eliminating the really beautiful comments which were attached to the post without picture.  I'm really sorry that you won't get to read them.  They were very lovely.  Marya's reminiscences of Russia were wonderful to read along other very hopeful, Spring, thoughts.  It feels like I have stomped all over someone else's writing and the thrill of finally figuring out how to make this God-forsaken Radio software work has been cut by realizing that I have ruined someone's shared thoughts...I'll try to be better next time....

Bo

9:21:56 PM
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Bumping into God

This time of year has got to be the worst.  It is officially Spring.  It's been in the 70s for the past two weeks.  Yesterday it snowed a foot.  Everywhere you look it’s stark, muddy, dreary, and downright depressing!  After a cold, dark winter I want to be warm and have things green again.  Unfortunately my desire outdistances reality. We are in a seasonal limbo just at the time when we are most ready for the reprieve of Spring and the promise of new growth and warmer weather; at the midway point between the way things have been and the dawning of a fresh, new season.

Lent is like that.  We are in a time of self-examination and denial of varying degrees.  As with the first snowfall of winter, we met Ash Wednesday and our Lenten discipline with some excitement and anticipation of spiritual renewal.  Now we are midway through it and we’re asking ourselves, “How much of this stuff do I really need anyway?”

It is just at this point that we are most susceptible to bumping into God.

This time of year is when, as we go about our daily business in the midst of the mud and dreariness, our attention gets drawn suddenly and unexpectedly to a splash of color off in the woods somewhere.  Usually it’s only a fleeting glimpse at 70 miles an hour down the highway.  But it’s enough to grab your attention.  A bundle of screaming yellow daffodils bursting forth in an incongruous place from bulbs left there by an absent-minded squirrel who has long since forgotten where it buried this little repast, telling us in no uncertain terms that Spring is coming in spite of what it may look like.  If the woods were full of them, this burst of yellow amid brown and grey wouldn’t be all that significant.  But we have been privileged to bump into God here.  And the daffodil tells us something very important; that we can find hope in the places we least expect it, even in our self-imposed Lenten desert.  In fact, in this low ebb of our spiritual journey, we may expect it.  But realize this - these fleeting glimpses of yellow in the woods or the occasional bumping into God are just that: fleeting.  More likely than not, that splash of yellow only registered a few miles further down the road.  But that’s OK.  I think God wants it that way.  Coming out of the desert too soon can be just as bad as not going there at all.  A splash of color in the woods, a fleeting moment when we realize that God has visited us in our desert; just enough to renew our hope that the Easter of seasons and the Easter of our lives is coming yet again.

Maybe there's a reason why daffodils look like trumpets.

9:14:10 PM
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