Up the Sunbeam

-- The seasons are changing, as much as they ever do in this part of Northern California. The changes are subtle here, slow, surreptitious, easy to miss if you're not paying attention. The light changes color before the leaves do; it slopes in at a different angle and whispers of changes to come. The overnight lows are lower, as are the daytime highs, climbing 'only' to the mid seventies, and the Californians hunch their shoulders and hug themselves for warmth. They start looking for their sweaters and dig out their supply of words like COLD and FREEZING! I chuckle at their hyperbole and tell them I'm just finally getting comfortable--I will allow the occasional use of COOL, perhaps even CHILLY if I'm feeling especially generous, but COLD?  Um, NO! I do not miss the high, flat, smoggy, metallic skies of our hot Contra Costa summers, and I always thrill to see the splashes of color the trees don in autumnal celebration of cooler weather. The natural changes around...

-- All is quiet. None but the night owl stirs. The clock ticks on and the candle burns at both ends, but she takes no notice. The wee hours tiptoe by until her eyes are blurry and every breath climbs to the surface as an insistent yawn, begging for the soft slow breath of sleep. Finally the stubborn night owl admits defeat and readies for sleep, knowing the time is short until a new day's light must be reckoned with. She knows she shouldn't. She wishes she hadn't. She promises she'll do better, and means it . . . until tonight comes, and then she does it all again. It isn't because she can't sleep; it isn't that she's worried or wide awake or uncomfortable. She simply loves the quiet. She is weak in the face of the intoxicating prospect of uninterrupted hours all her own. No matter how much she loves her people (which she does, fully, deeply, passionately), she needs the solitude to recharge. Sometimes she reads, sometimes she writes, sometimes she ...

-- "I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture." John 10:9 NASB Jesus paints Himself in the simplest of things, such familiar things. The Bread of life, the Light of the world, the Lamb of God, and here He calls Himself "the Door." For the longest time I didn't understand how Jesus could, in the same breath, be both the Good Shepherd and the Door for His sheep. Only after studying the shepherds of Jesus' day, did it become clearer for me. For the protection of his flock, a shepherd would lie down, placing his own body across the threshold of the doorway of the fold through the night, saying in essence, "you can't get to my sheep without going through me." He became the door to keep the sheep in and to keep the predators out. In the morning, he would lead his sheep to pastures of his choosing, always going before them. Evening would find him leading his sheep back to the shel...

-- Hustle . . . hurry . . . faster, faster, faster!! Rushing, harried thoughts run like a drum beat through life. Giving attention to organization helps, but even then, there is so much to do and it all seems tied to a deadline of some kind. I rarely feel like I have the permission of . . . I don't know, the cosmos I guess, to make time for rest. If I'm not accomplishing something, achieving something measurable, I'm wasting time, right? My husband, my children, my parents, my Heavenly Father ALL tell me to take time to refresh, but . . . too often I don't, at least not in meaningful ways. I find myself instead stealing time from responsibilities in a series of little minutes-long chunks, and then feeling guilty for having stolen them, thinking, "I should be doing ______________, and ______________, and _____________, not goofing off!" Guilt, guilt, guilt. Then when I hear my Heavenly Father's prompting, "Why don't you go for a walk a...