Inverted Glory

This gift of time, it opens the door for me to walk through. So I step outside, down the snow-crusted street, drifts and ice and shovelled remnants telling the tale of a persistent winter. 

This gift of breeze, it tickles my senses and awakens me to beauty unseen, only tasted in the soul. And why should we be given such a palette of scents? We wouldn’t be the wiser if everything smelled like vanilla, or vinegar, or rotten vegetables.

This gift of sun, it beckons me to look up, look ahead, to LOOK, and see the wonder around me, see through the wonder to the WONDERFUL One who took pains to make it just so. 

And colour plays in hues. And breezes waft in gentle shades. And time slows, turns musical, and the world plays a symphony around me. And I join in, lift a melody line of sighing gratitude, breath falling in time: exhaling thanks, inhaling grace. 

Why does it come so rarely? Why can I not live in this sphere all the time? Why don’t I see the miracle and live in the song all the time? Here, I know I am alive. Why take such pains to avoid LIFE? Why sink in apathy and procrastinated gluttony, letting heavy soul glug along, sapping life and moving slow . . . a slow without intention, a slow without attention, a slow dulled and tired.

But this . . . this gentle walk calls life, draws attention, awakens purpose. Everything looks deeper, as though it really is significant, and can sing me a story. The leaning trees with shadow and shelter, the bridge ahead, the very ice of the lake. 

Snow footprints: they began as indentations, marring the unbroken silence of White’s blanket. Now, they are all that remains of a snow blown into ditch and rock and alley. They started as an interruption on the landscape by adventurers or lovers, exploring the newly formed world of ice. Now, they echo the journey, a brief-lasting memorial, guides and trophies of a secret past. 

And sometimes, glory echoes inverted, in the things that ruin our landscapes and mar our dreams. Sometimes, glory IS inverted, the marks and scars left after the adventure and surgery and soul struggle, these marks tell more than the pristine vista, because they tell of healing, of life still living, of battle and bruise and the fight with evil. They acknowledge something is WRONG in the world, they scream to be made right . . . even while they promise that there is RIGHT, that there is GOOD. Because scars reveal healing, and in each scratch is a story of grace.

 

 

Sometimes, we just need TIME to look for the stories, LIGHT to see their beauty, and EARS to hear the song of glory threaded through each one. 

So, let our souls WALK with You, Lord, the Maker of Song, so we can hear Your music in our own souls, and detect it in others . . . so we can call it out and join the global and heavenly song of Glory.