When you are blind like I am and take off your glasses before stepping into the shower, sometimes, when you’re finished and you step back out and put on your glasses and turn around to close the curtain, you might notice that you had been showering with a wolf spider.
When I saw that spider the other day, I just stood there,
exhausted. I couldn’t even work up a
good shudder. I briefly considered just
walking away and pretending I hadn’t seen it.
I will say that the spider looked even more traumatized than
me. He didn’t even flinch when I came at
him with a whole roll of paper towels, because when you’re killing a wolf
spider, it requires at least half a roll of paper towels.
Can you believe that it is October? When Reverand Jane mentioned stewardship in
her sermon this past Sunday, my first thought was “Stewardship? But it’s March!” And then I started counting the months out
and realized it was October and in less than three months the year will be
over.
It is cold enough now that there are no more sleeping bees. The milkweed pods are bursting open with
their silken seeds. Dried leaves litter
my yard and spill from the gutters.
Earlier in the summer the grass seemed to grow six inches overnight, but
now it is slowing down.
The other morning when I went for a walk, I could see my
breath fogging in front of me.
Several mornings, I have left for my walk, got to the end of
the drive and said, “Nope,” and then turned back around to the house to grab a
jacket.
We are rapidly approaching the time of year when I say, “Okay,
we’re at that point where I won’t be warm again until May.”
Time flies so fast the older you get. I was reading that the reason why time runs so
slowly when we’re children is because everything is new. Our brains are being bombarded with new
information daily. Perhaps that’s why
the school year always seemed to last forever, but the summer flew by in a
heartbeat.
The key to making time flow more slowly as we age is to
engage in new things. Learn a new
language, a new skill. Avoid the routine. Even doing something as simple as taking a
new route to a familiar place can slow down the pace of the day.
Or we can try a more contemplative approach and not just
look for God wherever we are at but allow ourselves to get excited by the
positive things that happen throughout our day.
Our reading from Luke 7:18-35 has a lot in it, but I want to
focus on this one verse. Listen again, “Go
and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the
lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the
poor have good news brought to them.”
Can you imagine?
Let me ask that question again: Can you imagine?
Something amazing was happening.
Something wonderful and perhaps a little scary, because this
Jesus, this guy from Nazareth, was doing some pretty incredible things.
People blind at birth are seeing again.
Paralyzed people are walking again.
Sick people are being made well again.
Perhaps you can pass off those things as naturally occurring. Sometimes people do just get better.
But tucked into that list are these words, “… the dead are raised.”
Can you imagine?
I have spent the last few weeks working on two little books,
one entitled “Lazarus, Come Out” and the other, “Little Girl, Wake Up.” They are two works imagining the events
surrounding Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus being raised from the dead. Lazarus’ story is told from the point of view
of his sisters in the days leading up to his death and the days following and
the grief they feel and pain they feel from what they think are unanswered
prayers.
Jairus’ daughter, who I have imagine with the name Anna, is
the imagined story of what happened after she was raised from the dead. What does it mean to live again? How does a child comprehend what has just
happened to them?
But whether it’s Lazarus or Anna or the son of the Widow of
Nain (also raised from the dead), these were signs—the season was
changing. Something new was
happening. Time seemed frozen in those
moments.
What is the season of life you are currently
inhabiting? What are signs in your own
lives that things are changing? Where do
you see God at work?
For me personally, I turned 50 earlier this year and apparently
different parts of me reached their expiration date. I had emergency gallbladder surgery in the
spring. And now, this fall, I have had
my first two root canals and other tooth excitement.
I have been exhausted.
And yet, as far as my writing is concerned—I have never been
so productive in all my life.
Writing sustains me.
Thinking about God fills me.
Finding God someplace new every day is what nudges me out of
bed in the morning.
I mean a spider in the shower is what fueled this
reflection.
Do something new today.
Look for God somewhere you wouldn’t expect to find Him. I promise He is there.
Amen.
