humidity
This afternoon, I walk down vibrant streets amid trees of every shape and size, their saturated leaves upturned to receive, awaiting the coming of nourishing rains. Sweat meanders down my spine, the humidity thick and heavy with promises. It will rain today, in heavy sheets, but in the meantime, the landscape waits, dense with anticipation.
It’s Teacher Appreciation week. When I left the house, fourteen cards, one for each member of the staff at the small school Adam attends, lay open on the bar, each one like a pair of cupped, empty hands waiting to be filled with his gratitude. I created the opportunity for his thanksgiving, my own heart full of gratitude for countless kindnesses, left the open cards for him to find, in invitation, each carefully marked with a teacher’s name.
My feet tap against the asphalt, which has lost its glitter to the dark, sun-swallowing clouds.
Life feels heavy for all of us, almost all the time, as fat thick and weighty with need as this humidity, and that’s the acknowledgement with which I begin to pray. At this point in my pilgrimage, prayer comes as a natural exhale when I’m on the move, perhaps my soul’s way to physically articulate what it means to walk in step with the Spirit, to follow the good shepherd literally with tissue and bone and breath. No sooner have I admitted in prayer that I’m swimming in hard and trying to remember how to breathe, than the Spirit, who is the inhale, the inspiration, asks what I’m doing with my hands, if they’re upturned, waiting for an outpouring to come.
Let me be clear: this is not some human voice booming either within or without my mind. To hear from the Spirit of God feels a bit more, at least for me, like knowing from intimate experience over such a long time the words my husband will say before he says them, like knowing completely with the passing of an expression what he feels about a situation, and it’s in this way that I begin to feel some urgency about readying my hands for a coming deluge of ineffable refreshing, about preparing my lips to give thanks. This is not, of course, the first time, not even today, that I have perceived this open invitation, blank and waiting, for my own thanksgiving. Just this morning, in the predawn candlelight, I filled a blank page with my gratitude for grace upon grace already given, and now again, as I feel the Spirit fall fresh, I know it’s time to turn back to give thanks.
In Luke’s account of the good news about Jesus, he wrote the story of a group of lepers who encounter the King on the outskirts of a village where they live together but in isolation, estranged from their families and removed from their community. They beg Jesus not specifically for healing from the leprosy, but for mercy and compassion, that is, for an expression of God’s character on God’s terms. These days, my prayers come out similarly smeared with desperation. Have mercy, Lord. Just give me you, on your terms.
In the account, Jesus responds to the request by telling the lepers to go show themselves to the priests, which carries them, in faith, sure of their hope and certain of what they can’t yet see, right into the village with their filthy, leprous bodies, in anticipation of an outpouring. As they set off, their hearts open wide to receive, the lepers suddenly realize they are well. One turns back, glorifying God, that is, ascribing to Him the weight of His majesty, falling at the feet of Jesus to give thanks.
Thanksgiving is an act of worship acknowledging that God Himself is the gift.
Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, Israel’s King David urged in more than one of his songs, referring to the purposeful thank offerings that were part of Israel’s sacrificial system, but with an eternal echo that resurfaces in New Testament scripture in Paul’s imperative, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.
Thanksgiving comes at a cost, a living sacrifice, both in the intention to turn and make the offering and in the choice to acknowledge that refreshing will come, to behave as though it already has, even while the dense anticipation born of trouble feels stifling. The sacrifice of thanksgiving today is the acknowledgement that the eternal glory God will achieve outweighs the heavy clouds now shadowing the land, and the vibrancy that is evident prior to the blessing, the saturated lushness of God’s love, is gracious testimony that living hope does not disappoint. I can make my offering, palms empty and upturned, knowing that God’s coming fullness is the better part of anticipation.
So, I open my hands now to receive, and sweat drips from the tips of my fingers, flung away by the swinging of my arms.
Right now, to be honest, it just feels terribly hot, the air so thick I can barely breathe, but the rain is coming, of that I’m certain, and gratefulness gathers in me, for gifts already given and gifts already on the way, enough to outlast my walk, still more for the rest of the season.
Back home, Adam bends over those cards, his brow furrowed, his knuckles whitened by a good, tight grip on a pencil, as he makes an offering of his own, his handwriting broad and the sentiment grand for all its simplicity. Just thank you, fourteen times, and love, an easy acknowledgement that, more than anything they’ve done, his teachers have in fact been the real gift.
