When the Stunning Becomes Routine

Someone posted a photo of a colorburst sunset that filled the screen with vivid oranges and pinks and red splashed over both sky and the lake below. He followed it with, "I know sunsets are overdone, but I am so thankful I live here."

Overdone? Sunsets? I had to pause. 

A sunset if it happened but once in a lifetime would be a miraculous appearing, a spectacular sight inspiring music and poetry. It would be the stuff of legends and lore. But we get to see it every day.

So sunsets are overdone because they are plentiful and routine? That's like saying hugs are overdone or friendships or laughter. They are all richly abundant in our lives--until they are not. 

Instead perhaps it is posting that is overdone.

Posting a snapshot as a way of paying lip service to appreciation or pressing the like button as shorthand for expressing support for one undergoing great struggle lets us engage from the edges without taking the time to pray or to write a note the old fashioned way. It's easier that way.

It lets us get on with our day. 

We can feel informed but unencumbered. 

Now I've gone and done it here. 

In a culture awash with a preoccupation with each one's opinion, it's no surprise that the news stations and entertainment programs alike beckon, "Tweet us your thoughts, ""Vote for your favorite," "Tell us what you think." They are all trying to engage us, and the measure of engagement can be quantified immediately. It means big dollars.

And in the process it raised the ante on our opinion.


Many hold their opinion as highest authority; It matters little what shaped that opinion or whether critical thinking ever came into play. Whether one likes a thing or not is all that matters. But I digress.


On another note, I have been slow in posting and writing lately, not for lack of inspiration, but for lack of pensive time to actually get it down in writing. My mind and heart have been richly filled with challenges and jobs to do, with people to serve and blessings to enjoy. But the heart of a writer, even a late-born one who only writes to capture a thought and preserve it for herself, wants to write. The words will come again. There is so much to share.

So the apology over a sunset was the prompt today. And now a thought expressed in October 2011:

Let us never lose the sense of wonder at God's handiwork. When such a magnificent sight no longer gets our attention, we've gotten too preoccupied with ourselves. How many have I missed? More than I can say. But I am thankful for the time to turn aside and savor this one.

So Moses said, "I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up." Exodus 3:3

Take the time to turn aside and see what great sights we might be missing.

Expressing appreciation anyway we do it is not overdone. And be generous with warm hugs while we're at it. We don't know what we have until it is gone.

They Say Everything Old is New Again

“What has been will be again, 

what has been done will be done again; 

There is nothing new under the sun.”

Ecclesiastes 1:9

The longer I live the more I believe it to be true. 

Without addressing for now the broader implications this prompt generates, its truth is easily applied to contemporary culture.

Old fashioned names have made a comeback as babies are given names that have not been on a school roster in decades. Though the list of most popular boy names includes the biblical Eli, Noah, Elijah and Isaac, it does not yield Ezekiel in 2015.

 In name association, Ezekiel takes me to my grandfather’s knee where I first heard that old spiritual “Dry Bones” and discovered musical skeletal anatomy. Pappy loved to sing to us about connecting those dry bones, modulating upward in successive keys to get to “Now hear the word of the Lord.”

“Dem Dry Bones” was sung by Rosemary Clooney, The Lennon Sisters and Tennessee Ernie Ford, who also sang “Sixteen Tons” in a bass voice like Pap’s. You don’t have to have watched the Lawrence Welk Show to remember these, but it helps.

So I learned about Ezekiel at a young age with rapt attention and vivid imagery. I read recently something that took me back there.

Before Ezekiel's calling God appeared to him in a vision and Ezekiel saw the glory of God, detailing when and where he saw this vision in Ezekiel 1:1. Ezekiel remembered where he was—precisely.

The writer etched in his mind so that he could draw upon that distinct memory. That intentional practice is important for us. Likewise, raising an Ebenezer is a way of marking a spot to acknowledge something important we must not forget.

I’ve never had a vision of God. I do not doubt that I can happen, it just has never happened to me. One occasion when I distinctly remember seeing an extraordinary sight –a vision, if you will--was while visiting with a dear woman in her home.

 I had known this family friend all my life, and she always had been old. Beautiful, clever, talented, full of grace and dogged determination— and old.  Now she was dying.

As I talked with her by her bedside I became aware of seeing what I can only call a transformation in her face, a subtle change in her countenance. For more than a few moments I beheld her with youthful vigor, a radiant glow. I was struck by an awareness that I was in a sacred space. Perhaps this is what she had looked like decades ago before her face was creased with lines and her upswept white hair framed her dark eyes. She was serene and still her beautiful self.

I tried to take it in not knowing what to make of it. The impression was distinct and ephemeral. We said goodbye for what I expected would be the last time. My mother and I went home. Within the hour the phone rang and I already knew: She was gone. I was at the time writing the words that would be spoken at her service later.

I was also struck with the awareness that there is so much more to this life than we can take in through our senses. I can never forget that time and place of experiencing an unusual sight though I did not speak of it for over ten years. 

When we limit our understanding of reality to that which we can quantify and observe, to those things we can put in boxes and stack neatly, we leave so much untapped. This experience I relate which occurred this very week years ago humbles me and reminds of the tremendous mystery in life.

 I am content to live with a respect for all that I cannot know and with gratitude for all that I do.

Ezekiel, we are told, fed upon God’s word and was sustained by the Spirit of God. That is not merely ancient literature: What sustained Ezekiel will sustain us today.

I want a vision of God's glory. I want to take in the Word of God until it seeps from the pores of our lives, and want to appropriate the Spirit's presence in our lives until God becomes our greatest reality.

The Presence of God becomes the power of God to sustain us—just as He promised.




Writing and remembering....photo from the porch at Upper Rawls at Lake Junaluska, NC. Blue Ridge morning mist cradles the valley train whistle over hot coffee: a trifecta for gifts of peace.

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.   Psalm 90:2

Dream Again and Deeper

"For broken dreams, the cure is dream again...and deeper."  ~ C.S. Lewis


Some would tell us that dreaming is idle; dreaming is wasting time.

"Stop daydreaming," we hear from a distant classroom memory as the teacher scolded disengaged students. Yet, dreaming has a hallowed place among the mature and serious just the same. Dreaming  generates within us a quickness, a lightness of spirit in spite of age or infirmity. There can be an invisible quality to dreaming that greatly enhances our days.

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on..." Shakespeare wrote on The Tempest.

Never stop dreaming.

Wake up a tired dream. Dust off an old one. Seek a fresh vision for this present season of life and pray for an ability to imagine our lives invigorated by a dream. Let it bubble up. Watch it intersect our lives from unexpected places. Seek it diligently. Prepare to see something new, and give thanks.

Never stop dreaming.


Nunquam subsisto somniare

Jamais arrêter de rêver

Mai smettere di sognare

никогда не прекращайте мечтать

Anyway you say it, the key is to keep a dream alive.

Stay plugged into a source that feeds us with life-giving energy when much of the world around us would drain us and leave us aching for more. More stuff. More time. More money. More influence. More and enough to stockpile, if we could, but we cannot. Time is like manna: we only have enough for this day to use wisely.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. James 1:5


 photo credit: Prentice Stabler