Glaze

"Ours is the God who is drawn to those who feel down. Ours is the God who is attracted to those who feel abandoned. Ours is the God who is bound to those who feel broken." - Ann Voskamp, The Greatest Gift

Central Virginia is an interesting state when it comes to winter weather. Any threat of ice or snow sends the local weathermen into hysterics. Having lived in northeast Ohio for several years, we find this laughable.

Sunday we suffered through a "paralyzing" ice storm that left a lot of moisture on the roads and a few icy patches. It was rather anticlimactic. Of course, those who don't consider the fact that you must drive differently even in mildly icy conditions end up in ditches and become BREAKING NEWS at 11PM. It became an over-hyped, rather lame non-event.

The benefit is this; sometimes the world slows down. We leaned into better-safe-than-sorry and cancelled Sunday morning church services, and local schools had a two hour delay this morning. There was room to breathe, in this span of frigid day into night and day again. 

The ice settled around the landscape; branches and boughs dipped toward the dirt. Some snapped under the weight of the precipitation. The morning looked heavy, burdened; and yet, it glistened.

Lately, I have been contemplating the stories of the Bible as grand metaphors, giving myself permission to sink into the narrative and allow it to expose a new perspective of The God Who Saves. I cannot wrap my head around this, cannot fathom the depth and breadth of a God who Always Was and Always Is and Always Will Be. I can read and believe, I can give assent to intellectual and philosophical content. I can follow. 

But I bump into walls, bang my head against contradictions and controversies and the things for which I simply have no explanation. I think we all do. 

And then we choose. We can bury our heads and stomp our feet and cling to what must be true, stand firm. I have done that. I continue to do that, sometimes.

But I cannot escape this great mystery, that in and around and above and below the stories and the proclamations and the declarations, there is One who was and is, and is to come. 

Not just is to come, but has been here, already, born helpless and hungry. 

Born just like us.

The stories of the gods throughout history are many. Ours is not the only flood story. Ours is not the only exodus. 

But uniquely ours is a God who came to us, who offers rescue. 

It is very, very different. 

The broken, heaviness of our world glistens, like the cedars bearing the burdensome glaze of frozen moisture this morning. It shimmers and shines with hope.

Our salvation has been here. The One who saves, he put on human skin and came.

For us.

Thanks be to God; I just can't get over it.