Drinking deeply of post-rain air

The world feels like it’s falling apart, doesn’t it? Last week, a restlessness and disturbance seemed to pervade every moment I was awake. Whenever I did the things that usually fill my soul, I would resurface from them feeling more antsy and nervous than when I started. The books and poetry I love were suddenly reduced in my mind to nothing more than a distraction from reality. I had to stop reading books so I could read our world instead, but I only found incomprehensible riddles that taunted me and gnawed at me. And then I shut off instagram, I shut off the news, I even shut off my phone and it wasn’t an immediate freedom I felt, but the longer those things stayed shut off, the more those knots within me became undone. Friends, the only way we’ll survive this is if we refuse to let the news and the media hold sway over our minds and hearts.

In Isaiah 55, God calls out to us: “Come, all who are thirsty, come, fetch water; come, you who have no food, buy corn and eat; come and buy, not for money, not for a price. Why spend money and get what is not bread, why give the price of your labour and go unsatisfied? Only listen to me and you will have good food to eat. Come to me and listen to my words, hear me and you shall have life.” His words, scripture, and his Word, Jesus-- these are the things which truly satisfy. Jesus himself says “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:48-51). He gave it and we have it. What a shame it would be if we didn’t step into that life, if we stayed closed off day after day. I’m learning what it feels like when I stay closed off to the kingdom of life. In the extreme moments, it feels like last week and in the mundane moments, it feels normal and dull. It’s so easy to go from day to day with our heads bent down on the path, our eyes fixed on the next step we’re taking, but then we miss the angels swirling around our heads and the One walking before us, we miss the whole mountain we’re traveling up when we’re only focusing on our feet.

The image of Mount Zion and all its loftiness has been one of the images to which I’m clinging most lately. In scripture, it is the place of inheritance for us, where we will belong in heaven, our home. The kingdom is indeed here with us; it’s on this earth like the foot of a mountain is, but it also stretches far higher than this earth; it is on another plane, the top of it clothed in clouds, invisible to us, but more real than what we can see with our eyes. For sometimes the invisible things are more real than the visible. God tells us in Isaiah 55, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts than your thoughts.” I’m part of a Greek reading group where we’re wading through Genesis and I remember in chapter 1 when God creates the heavens, one unusual word kept recurring and it was στερεωμα, a noun for firmness, steadfastness, something established, and it was used in reference to the heavens: “και εκαλεσεν ο θεοσ το στερεωμα ουρανον,” and God made the steadfastness of the heavens. I absolutely love that the direct object here is not “heavens” as we would expect-- It’s not “and God made the heavens”-- but “heavens” here is a possessive and “firmness” is the direct object. So it is translated as “and God made the firmness of the heavens.” This image is one that I never knew I needed, but oh how I need it! The heavens, the skies-- it looks as though there is only air up there and even surrounding us-- but there is a realm in those places, settled and sure, unmovable and unchanging. The kingdom inhabits the air around us and the air in the skies, but it is not empty as it appears to be-- “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts than your thoughts.” The kingdom is full of his ways and his thoughts. It is above us, but somehow it has also touched earth and it is around us. What an immense comfort it is that the endless and stifling cyclical pattern of my own thoughts and actions are not the pattern of His. He is not plagued by questions and loneliness. He does not move between a feeling of settledness and homesickness, satisfaction and longing-- no, if he did, then he wouldn’t be capable of being the answer to my longing or to my satisfaction. Thank you, Lord, that you and your ways are in no way tangled up in my own. And at the same time, thank you for deciding to stretch your hand down into this mess to untangle me. I want to turn my eyes upward to stare into your face. I don’t want to miss another flicker in your gaze or another word from your lips. There are gifts raining down from the Father of Lights and I’m tired of gathering them from off the ground all of the time-- they’re dusty and trampled by the time I recognize them for what they are. I want to catch them in my arms before the ground does. I want to keep looking up.

“And as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return until they have watered the earth, making it blossom and bear fruit, and give seed for sowing and bread to eat, so shall the word which comes from my mouth prevail; it shall not return to me fruitless without accomplishing my purpose or succeeding in the task I gave it” (Isaiah 55). Manna rained down on the Israelites in the wilderness every day. And then, Jesus himself, the Bread of Life, came down from heaven. And what amazes me about all of this is that we simultaneously get the renewing promise wrapped up in the manna story, as well as the true fulfillment of the Bread of Life. Both of these things are wrapped up in his words, scripture. His words are raining down every day if we only open our ears and look up to receive them. And we have a promise-- that these words from heaven will accomplish the purposes within us which they were sent for. The purpose being that we “shall indeed go out with joy and be led forth in peace. Before [us] mountains and hills shall break into cries of joy, and all the trees of the wild shall clap their hands;” there shall be abundance in the desert landscapes of our souls again. When we take his words into us and drink the rain falling from heaven daily, we will be led to the place where everything is joy and peace, we will be led closer to that mountain than we’ve ever been before, drawn to the threshold, the brink, the edge of forever-- spending time in His presence with His words settling in our ears like music and on our tongue like snowflakes draws us farther away from earth and nearer to heaven, to the kingdom. It’s a palpable change, a shift in things. On days when I forget to look up to let his words drop into my soul, everything really does look ordinary and dull, but when I attune my ears to the music and the singing of the angels, and the snowfall of my Lover’s words, the calling of the One on the mountain, then everything around me is richer in color, luminous with truths and connections, magical and bright with the sunbeams from another world. I want to live life like that. There is a life beyond the boundary of ourselves and a life beyond the boundary of this world. Let’s go chase it together :)

Here’s a snippet from one of my poems entitled “You can find me at the well:”

“Breathing, he breathed,

filling my jar with something that is not water…

but it was something like that magic air,

grasping with dewy hands the fringe of a summer storm,

so full of water but yet so soft and cool.

The air I’ve always wanted to bottle and carry with me,

the easy and light kind.

And hmmmm and oh I am breathing in the water of this post-rain air.

My love has come

and he has filled me.

I will drink deeply, oh! Let me drink deeply!

And yes, I can safely say that

when I see myself in his eyes,

there I am, running in those eternally golden fields.

And when I hear him say my name,

those sounds are liquid sunbeams.

And when my lips meet his lips,

my lungs fill from his lungs.

And my lung-jars are full to overflowing and I swim with him in all that sea.

[...]

Oh, let me tell you the endless stories

of how my heart has soared on the wings of the dawn

and settled in the well of my Lover’s hands.”