too wonderful
Early morning and the world still new, I walk along the sidewalk, testing the breeze against my cheeks. I wonder if my skin glows, picking up the last gently fading hues of sunrise. On break from crawling traffic and from the hurry hurry usually right on my heels, I find joy in life less defined by destinations. God lives here, right now.
This morning, I discovered a command: See! I am with you always (Matthew 28:20). Candlelight flickered over the words. My eyes usually skip right over them. Honestly, the whole passage has gone neglected too long. Translations render the imperative “and surely,” even “lo,” but the that language mutes the command. The Greek idou means See! or Look! Jesus meant that his disciples should look for Him, that we should see Him with us always.
I watch Dogwood petals flutter on a swooping branch. A dragonfly free falls into a lush stand of grass. I lift my nose and smell yesterday’s rain. We mists live and fade too fast, but God forever moves in that swoop, that wild fall, that rain, still lingering.
I exhale a prayer, suddenly feeling King David’s poetic questions, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? (Psalm 139:7).” I lift my arm, sweeping it through the wind. God is everywhere, I had said to Riley just last night at supper, opening my arms to suggest something larger than the table, than the room, than myself.
I detour around a fat tree, some border planting sprawled now across the walk, weighed heavy with rain. I step cautiously through upbraided, muddy ground. I can see the roots of that tree curling skyward like knobby fingers, exposed. On pilgrimage, I learn to see God still with me in every context, in every place; He has been teaching me to find Him in the startled tangle of those reaching roots, in the inky puddle just now at my feet. I look down. In the puddle, I can see both the edges of my tennis shoes and the wide open sky.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”
Psalm 139: 11-12
So many times I’ve read the I am His in that psalm and missed the He is mine. He has always wanted to be with me. He never leaves. God is my friend. I chuckle aloud, realizing that God also insists that I recognize Him in the traffic, not just here, on a quiet walk when I can better focus. Lately, we crawl down the highway, the car full of singing worship, and God shows me people; He shows me lives, not just the snarl of pollen-crusted cars, and He says, “This is where I am.” And I laugh over this, because introverts like me need to learn to see God in crowds.
A solitary woman walks toward me now, coming from the opposite way. We do not smile politely and cast our gazes away; we do not pass silently by. She slows, bending toward me like a tree turned in the wild wind. She meets my eyes. “Good morning,” she says warmly, just the two words. In her gaze, I can see miles; I can see her. Her glasses reflect crisp sunlight.
“Good morning,” I return with equal warmth, receiving peace and something more, something wordless and of a quality too real for names and time. She smiles again, seeing me, acknowledging me with an almost indiscernible pause. And then, as pilgrims do, she lifts her hand and journeys on. We are strangers, and yet somehow not.
For a moment, it feels as though we occupy the same thin space, she as Peter looking, me, a woman healed. Or maybe today I am the one looking when no one one else will; maybe today the Spirit heals through me. Learning to see God, understanding what He’s done, means also learning to see each other. Healing begins with acknowledgment. “So then, from now on,” Paul wrote, “we have a new perspective that refuses to evaluate people merely by their outward appearances. For that’s how we once viewed the Anointed One, but no longer do we see him with limited human insight (2 Corinthians 5:16).” Again and again, Jesus touches my eyes. See! I am with you always.
