Snow always puts me in a contemplative mood.
I think it's because snow is both incredibly frightening but oh, so beautiful.
Snow has both the power to destroy and to cover over, to bring to ruin and to create beauty. It is, I think, one of God's most ironic creations.
It has been snowing since late last night; the flakes floating fat past my windows in a fluttery, almost divine sort of dance. It has steadily gotten heavier over the day, accumulating to about 4 inches or so beneath my windowsill.
Inside my warm apartment, I was curled up in a candy-cane striped blanket, so completely captivated by the snowfall, but I had to walk outside for a moment. It's funny how quiet and still everything gets when it's snowing.
It's almost like the whole world is pausing to take a breath; silence unbroken except for that of a few children running and crunching the snow beneath their boots...shrieking now and again in the new found joy of their arctic afternoon.
Powdery earth, white heavens, the flakes fall down from open skies, released by an unseen Hand.
Amongst the silvery trees outside my back balcony, 8 cardinals fluttered and flapped, a glorious riot of color on this white afternoon.
It's in the quiet, in the stillness, in the silence that the whispers of God can be heard. He's not found in the earthquake. He's not found in the fire. He's not found in the rushing winds. He's found in the silence.
But sometimes I wonder if He likes to hang out in the snow.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
powdery earth below, white heavens above
Posted by Bethany Hawkins at 6:08 PM 2 comments
Thursday, January 8, 2009
breaking.
There was a reason why I was in band in high school and not in choir.
Posted by Bethany Hawkins at 2:17 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
falling.
Has the Lord ever seemed so close that you could almost hear His heartbeat? Or has the Lord ever seemed so far that it feels like you’re reaching to the sky, but grasping nothing? I feel stuck between the two.
Lately it feels like I’m being given a crash course in faith, and it’s so hard not to feel like I’m gonna fall out of the sky…
I feel like I’m walking on the edge of a knife: stray to far to the right or the left and you’ll be hurt, but walk the edge and you’ll be perfectly safe. The only thing though is that I’m starting to feel the edge of the blade come up through my shoes and it’s really hard not to just want to jump off, throw in the towel, and bow out of the game.
I know I’m not making any sense, but I had to get these feelings off my chest.
What am I doing here? Am I indeed chasing after what the Lord wants for me, or have I been duped into believing a grand lie? So often do I feel like everything is clicking and all the cogs are turning in their proper ways…that God truly has a plan and a design for me here…but today the cogs are not in sync, the rhythm’s off, there’s more than one out-of-tune note in the song…
It’s so hard to trust sometimes.
Posted by Bethany Hawkins at 3:12 PM 0 comments