The Oregon Coast and Willamette Valley experienced a reasonably large windstorm on Sunday night --large enough to knock down a plethora of trees and leave thousands of folks in the dark, either for minutes or hours at a time. It was uncanny... The weather forecasters predicted 10pm as the starting time for the storm, and sure enough, at 9:54pm... BUZZ. ZAP. CLUNK... The power went off in my home and silence descended like a curtain. What?! No TV?! I am appropriately ashamed to admit that I was watching a reality show (which shall go nameless here) and was mildly vexed that I was going to miss the results!
Alone with my feline companions, I promptly lit a few candles and snatched up my cell phone to reach out and connect. I texted a friend..."Are you without power, too?" Then I called my dearest Mommers to relate what I was experiencing at that very moment, and while it wasn't exactly press-stopping news that I was in the dark, she patiently listened to my plans for just how I was going to manage to clean up the painting project that I had been in the midst of, and how I would need to use the alarm on the cell phone for the morning since I couldn't set the clock by my bed. Eventually she tired of my survival checklist mentality and excused herself with the advice that I should simply go to bed since I couldn't do anything useful anyway.
I fumbled my way thru washing my face, brushing my teeth, etc. A sidenote on the bedtime toilette routine: Why is it that when you're washing your face by candlelight, *that* is the exact moment that the stupid urban legand about looking in the mirror in the dark and saying "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary" comes to mind?! You couldn't have paid me enough at that moment to try it. Anyhow, I digress....
It felt truly strange to be in total quiet, no comforting white noise of the cats' water fountain or the aquarium filter or the dryer tumbling my clothes. No sight but the flicker of a dozen candles in my living room, reflecting from the 3 cats' wide, curious eyes. A few faint flickers behind curtains in windows across the way reminded me that others were at home, sitting in the same silence, whether they found it to be refreshing or oppressive. After a brief attempt at reading by candlelight, I gave up the fight and went to sleep.
Power returned during the night, and as I pondered the experience on Monday morning while grooming myself for work, I kept thinking back to a point Pastor Bill made in his Sunday morning sermon. We often chip away at our exterior lives, trying to force ourselves to be more like God. We keep track of how often we pray or read the Bible. We engage in acts of mercy or compassion, consciously thinking that this is "what Jesus would do." Not to devalue those things, but we can try to squeeze endless godly activities into our lives, and form words that sound like a gentle rain of wisdom straight from the Bible, but we can never carve or mold ourselves into a righteous, godly being. That change works from the inside out. You have allowed Jesus into your heart, and from there he speaks directly to you of his love and will for you, and rebukes you out of fatherly goodness when necessary. The process is more like an injection mold... We start out as this empty casing in the image of God, and then as He works his way into the very corners of our existence, the mold is filled from the inside, gradually expanding until it is complete. After our earthly existence ends and the shell of our bodies is peeled away from our soul, out pops this newly completed spiritual being, in the image of our Heavenly Father.
Here I was, sitting in the dark, bemoaning that I couldn't do anything "useful" and initially uncomfortable with the silence. How much of my life is like that? Do I volunteer to sing with the worship team because I love to praise the Lord, or because it's one of those ministry activities that should in theory benefit my spiritual growth? Do I volunteer with the kids program because I treasure the youngest members of God's Kingdom, or because it's an opportunity to show my spiritual maturity & leadership, making me feel like a better Christian? Am I just trying to chip away from the outside? And maybe most importantly, is the silence uncomfortable because it throws into sharp relief what's in my heart and mind and forces me to work with God from the inside out instead of saying, "See? Look what I did for you this week? Aren't I doing well?"
Maybe power outages are less of an inconvenience, and more of an opportunity to look into deep places untouched by the light we try to shine for the world.
3 comments:
Dang, girl, you preach it! Very thoughtful, and good for me at the moment. It's been a tough few weeks since coming from my Oregon visit. I think God would in fact like me to be in some quiet dark for a bit, and the thought of it overwhelms me.
Godo post, darlin'.
That word above should be good, by the way. Not so much a godo post :)
One of the best pieces of advice I may have ever been given was he idea of taking a DAWG day at least every quarter - that Day Alone With Gawd.
No CDs, no commentary, no Christian best seller.
It's you, it's God, it's wilderness. Maybe a journal to record what you hear. And maybe a Bible to have passages ready that He might point you too, but that's all.
Also, and this is important - no agenda.
At first the idea seems patenly impossible - where will I ever find the time. Then it seems silly - what could I possibly do with a day full of silence. Then it seems threatening - all alone? on purpose?
But when I do power througuh all those doubts they are some of the most wonderful days in my life. Admidetly, I've doen them far less often than 4 times a year, and even then I've still never brought myself to a full 24 hours alone...but I'm hoping.
Being alone with God is uniqely freeing and it makes me realize how much of my so-called-life is just another thing that distracts me from the real life that Christ promises me..and I fear.
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