Driving East to Look West

February 8, 2006

The sunset was epic tonight.

So I got in my car and drove East as fast as I could. Halfway to Gloucester I remembered that I was in fact heading the wrong direction to soak in the actual setting of the sun, with the exception of the subdued glow I could catch through the rearview mirror and my tinted windows. It just felt right, and then I knew something inside me wanted to see the sunset without the interference of wires and signage and other optical pollution. My spot of choice was Magnolia and the strip of pothole-riddled road that runs between the mansions and the Atlantic.

The view of the West from East was worth the moment of directional paradox.

And I don't know what sort of deeper meaning that holds for my life, exactly, except that sunset and dusk are my very favorite times of day, when my soul comes most alive and I can breathe in the glory of God's creation better than any other moment...it was just beautiful, and I wonder if I don't need to become more comfortable with loving the simplicity of enjoying God's blessings without theologizing it or having some moment of uncharacteristically deep throught to analyze because of it.

So I think I found a little something of peace to quiet the desperation of my heart by driving East to look West...

And so the faithful one who is my God shows himself just enough to remind me of what moments of abundant life look like, when you pause for a fraction of a second and think that there's nothing else in the whole world that you'd rather be doing than helping this beautiful child of God, this high school girl, find Ephesians.

because you can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been...

January 29, 2006:

I was going to write a book called "wonderfully devoid" - sounded like a good title somwhere in Israel so I wrote it down, but can't remember what I planned on putting in it, exactly.

It is potentially a concept I am trying to understand. Devoid is not usually one of those words one wants to be associated with, and is rarely paired iwth such an exalted emotion as wonderful. There's something about paradox that is intoxicating, though, something about the fact that two things just don't fit together - but really do, somehow - that puts me somewhere near the pulse of reality.

I wonder if my title came in the wilderness...maybe from the wadis and canyons where the desert fathers were said to have nothing - but lack nothing - because of the faithful provision of their God. I wonder how many moments their souls were heavy, weary or lonely and then quickened in a seemingly unlikely gasp of God's presence. I wonder whether they knew, all the time, about the "lacking nothing"...and how often they focused on the "having nothing." I think I live mostly under the latter, when my heart forgets the truth of the former.

"Some blessings from God were meant only to sustain us for a season..." I'm learning this lesson well, and wonder how long I can live in the paranoia of potential loss or loneliness. I am convicted to try to love well and fully and recklessly, even though it might hurt when the seasons change. And I think wonderfully devoid is that beautiful place where its just God and you and He's teaching you to be unknown.

So this is the stuff of life. Not some breath-defying shock of adrenaline at every hairpin turn, but a slow inhalation of subtle awe that settles somewhere at the bottom of your soul where you know its just right because its God's.