Just back from walking at Yorktown Beach.
It was hot. But it was beautiful.
You see, I’ve been trying to get into the habit of taking an hour each morning to get back to walking. I desperately need to do this, both for my health and my sanity. So, I’m usually up by 5:00 am, at work by 6:30, and then, depending on when I feel I can break the chains confining me to my work computer, I try to go take a walk.
And when I walk, it’s important to me that I be able to see the sky.The sky has always been important to me. Always. When I can see the sky, I feel like I can breath—like I’m not being choked or suffocated. When I can see the sky, I can much more easily sort my life out into the proper “columns” that I arrange in the sky. (Imagine treating the sky like a giant Dry Erase Board, with columns for every aspect of life: my crew, my job, God, Jesus, the future–the list is endless.) As I walk, I take my often chaotic thoughts and try to put them back in their proper perspectives; their proper columns. And I pray.
I pray differently when I’m walking then when I’m studying and praying in the morning. I can’t really explain it, and if I did, it wouldn’t make sense to anyone except God, so I won’t even try to. But there is a definite difference in how I relate to my creator God when I am out under that big, blue sky. I feel so little. And that’s not a bad thing.
It’s the moments under the sky in which I am reminded who I am in Christ. And, maybe more importantly, who I am not.
So this morning as I gazed in awe at the expansive blue sky, (without running into anyone or anything–an accomplishment for me), and as I sorted out my “columns”, I poured my desperate prayers out to my Lord and my God. Desperate because there are a few really tough, really desperate prayers that I need for Him to see, to know, to give me some sort of measure of direction or settled-ness on. There are hard things for a couple of my crew that are beyond my reach as a parent–hurts and needs in their life that I can’t fix.
And the sky came crashing down.
No, not literally. But in an enveloping way. By the time I returned to my car—tired, sweaty and out of breath because I am fat and out of shape—I felt enveloped by the blueness of the sky. Not in some crazy, mysterious, mystical way. Not in some overly emotional, “spiritual” way, but in a settled way. A calm way. An “Ok. I am not alone. God is real. And He sees. And knows.”
And I drove home in awe, once again, at the truth of Psalm 8:3-4:
Who am I, that God would care for me? To be enveloped by that thought; to be enveloped by the sky, is almost more than I can handle.
Words are so inadequate.
