Bless the Lord, O my soul!

O Lord my God, You are very great;

You are clothed with splendor and majesty, (Psalm 104:1)

 

Now, don’t hang on

Nothin’ lasts forever but the earth and sky

It slips away

And all your money won’t another minute buy

Dust in the wind

All we are is dust in the wind (From “Dust in the Wind” by Kerry Livgren)

 

That was some thunderstorm we had the other night.  I knew it was going to be serious when the red ‘Emergency Alert’ came over my cell phone.  One of the cracks of thunder was so loud that it seemed to shake the house.  It turns out that one of the trees in a park about two kilometers away from us was hit by lightening during that storm.

 

At one point I stood out in our sunroom watching the lightening light up the sky and the rain come down in torrents.  It was both thrilling and frightening at the same time.  So awesome and so unpredictable simultaneously.  I found myself holding my breath in excitement.

 

Then, just as quickly as it started, the rain and the thunder ended.  Our yard was dripping, but the air was still and warm.  I stepped out the back door onto our deck with the dog,s struck by the stillness and the almost ‘breathless’ quality of the night.  As I stood there, a million tiny lights started flickering on and off.  Fireflies.  Tiny pinpoints of light in the stillness.  Once again I found myself holding my breath.

 

And in that moment, I had insight into the fact that I had encountered God.  God in the storm and the majesty, and God in the stillness and the fireflies.  Reminding me that there is much much more to the world than my own little circle of selfishness that Covid seems to have reduced me to.  You see, its like something happens spiritually when we put on our masks.  The masks, at least in my experience, and all of the Covid precautions, have reduced our lives – forced us behind closed doors with fewer opportunities and fewer people around us – and then we have seemed to become spiritually reduced.

 

Reduced to only considering our well-being instead of the well-being of the whole world.  Reduced to only considering our own experience rather than the experience of our community.  Reduced to a place of self-preservation and, dare I say it?  Self-centeredness.

 

And we reduce God as well.  Reduced to our own walls and our own self-centered thinking.

 

But then – a thunderstorm roars in with all of its fearsome majesty.

 

And fireflies light up stillness with tiny little points of light.

 

And we realize that that this isn’t all that there is.  That we aren’t all there is.

 

Blessings today, and Remember you are Loved.

~Rev. Lynne

 

PS: Today’s picture is taken by our own Rev. Takouhi. She’s so creative, isn’t she!