behold
My body groans this morning, acutely I feel it crumbling, as Kevin and I head out for an early run, searching for renewal, and not just of muscles and tissues and cells. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, the apostle Paul wrote, and as our feet begin to tap staccato, I remember the hard-fought hope of Job, who not only did not understand the reasons for his pain and suffering but felt literally consumed by it.
In the dense poetry of the Biblical book titled with his name, Job lamented his own terrific tragedy and how physically he then wasted away, how he never slept, how nothing even tasted good anymore. Job’s crumbling came with a life-splitting roar that left him flailing, grasping after vanishing hope. But here and there, he grabbed on to his faith, actively seizing and believing astounding things about God like, though He slays me, yet will I hope in him.
I’m flailing today too, reaching for those handholds of faith, though certainly not under the same earth-shattering circumstances as the ones Job experienced. I feel emptied, husked, though I know it’s only how I feel and not the truth. Sometimes, I grow weary of endless perseverance.
We start our run on a gentle hill, a slog for me, as though I’m lifting my legs up and out of thick mud that holds my feet, and at the crest, I already feel out of breath.
Behold! I am doing a new thing. These were God’s words through the prophet Isaiah, a message of sight-correcting hope for a crumbling nation, and they are the words He brings to me now, as I press my body to climb the hill, as I will my legs to move, as I accept my own weakness. The word in Hebrew that is translated behold in the prophecy is an interjection, literally an interruption with an exclamation point implied. Behold! Look! See! In scripture, it is almost always used to draw attention to “a fact upon which action is to be taken or a conclusion based.” It’s God’s way in times like these to interject and not to leave me to my own broken conclusions.
Every morning God’s mercies are new, just as every day unfolds beneath a different sky. Today, the expanse is polished gold, glinting in rounds of clouds. Everywhere, the world looks radiant. I had been too inwardly focused to notice that the trees, the grass, even the houses look precious, fresh-washed and saturated, warmed and renewed by burnished light. I can feel it glowing on my cheeks. Scripture says that God’s glory infuses whatever—whomever—His face shines upon, until we become countless reflectors of light, like the tiny flecks of minerals now sparkling in the asphalt beneath our feet. This morning the blessing is for me: May His face shine upon you and give you peace.
“It’s beautiful. The sky is so beautiful,” I say to Kevin. I pray a lot about what I pass him, because wives can pass husbands all kinds of things, and even though I don’t want to, I often pass whatever temptation I’m facing. I pass my murmurs of lack and crumbling, often without passing the renewal that God wants and is accomplishing, even in me.
“Mmm, it is,” Kevin says, and wide-eyed we begin to scan the golden outline of the trees in front of us and to think about their testimony.
Ahead, a silver-haired man shuffles slowly, moving toward us rather than away, with a dog on a limp leash that appears to be tucked into the crook of his elbow. He holds a device in both hands and makes a crooked path in the center of the street while the dog lopes and wanders along the side of the road, pausing here and there to nibble the grass or push his nose into environs beneath. I notice the man wears slippers only because of the raspy noise his shoes make against the asphalt. His pajama bottoms pool around his ankles.
“Have you seen that?” He asks, pointing up at the sky beyond us, and I nod a little, thinking he means the light, but beside me, Kevin turns his shoulders, cranes his neck to see and gasps.
So, I twist my own body around too.
In the sky behind us stretches a double rainbow clear-painted, a vast arch of color like a gateway or a swooping celestial slide connecting unseen places. The heavens declare the glory of God, Scripture says. Day after day, they pour forth speech…they use no words…they have no sound. Look. See.
“Oh wow, thank you,” I say to the man in the street, smiling wide, and he ambles on as Kevin and I turn back to our run.
“We would never have seen that had he not pointed it out to us,” I say to Kevin, feeling grateful a kind neighbor chose to pass on his view of something beautiful; thinking about how much I need these silent speeches of glory; thinking that I also want to pass cups of living water to thirsty people.
Grabbing hold of something else Paul wrote, about how our troubles are achieving an eternal glory that far outweighs them; remembering the promise that, though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being re-new-ed, day by day; I press on, leaning into the run with a soft prayer on my lips.
Okay Lord, what else do you want me to see?
