Up the Sunbeam

-- Drummer boy left early for church this morning. He had to be there by 8:30  to practice with the worship band in preparation for the service the rest of us would attend later . He walked to the car and I stood in my pajamas at the open door, watching him go. He noticed me lingering there, hesitated and said, "What are you doing?" "Just feeling the fresh air," I said, drinking in the beauty of just-sprinkled flowers sparkling in the early rays of golden light. He smiled a knowing smile (he knows his momma does odd things like that), told me he loved me and proceeded to get in the car. I kept standing there even after I'd watched him drive around the bend toward the pale remnants of a tangerine sunrise. I made a point to notice how cool the gentle breeze felt on my face, how crisp and clear the air smelled, and how deep the purple of agapanthus flowers appeared against countless shades of green. It was a new morning, one I'd never seen before, the ...

-- Several days ago, Jennifer Lee posed a fun question on facebook.  She asked, "Which nativity character do you most closely identify with?" When I saw her question I was just breezing through and didn't have time to respond, but that question stayed with me as I went through the rest of a customarily busy leading-up-to-Christmas week. I guess this was kind of a new thought to me. I had never really tried to see myself in the characters, except to imagine what it was like for them as they lived their part in the story.  I did play the angel in the school Christmas play in grade 3 (that's what they call it in Canada where I lived at the time).  My costume was wonderfully homemade--a soft white robe made out of an old sheet with silver tinsel sewn around the hems of the billowing sleeves, wings my mother made (I can't remember how) and a tinsel-wrapped wire halo that was hard to keep from tipping off my slippery curls. (That was way back when schools st...

-- Somehow he looked at me and still thought I could do it. Perhaps he was an angel and I was unaware. My little brother Chad and I had just entered the lodge at Cathedral Lakes Provincial Park. Since we were both visiting for the first time, we wanted a little guidance to help us decide which trail to choose for our day trip. We asked the quiet, but friendly young man who had been our driver on the 9-mile, 1-hour, 4-wheel-drive climb from the floor of the Ashnola River Valley up some 5400 feet to the lodge which sits at about 6800 feet above sea level. He told us about the popular but difficult Rim Trail, which I knew would be too hard for me right now (I have a bunch of weight to lose and a lingering problem with one foot that has kept me from doing much walking/hiking for the last few months), so we asked him for a less strenuous recommendation. He told us we could take the Glacier Lake Trail part of the way up to the Rim Trail and still get some beautiful views and that it would...

-- Standing atop the very spine of North America, the Continental Divide, I drink in the majesty of what for me, is an always-place.  This view, these rocks, this air runs through my life like a favorite melody that recurs again and again in a movie soundtrack.  It's a place I always seem to go back to, a place I never get tired of, a place I miss deeply when I'm far away. High places are always like that for me. I have never met a mountain I didn't love --the higher and more jagged and snow-covered, the better.  Shimmering with an unearthly glory, mountains are rife with evidence of an all-powerful and monumentally grand Creator-God . I am only one of the more than 3 million people who visit these mountains in a year.  Whether they know it or not . . . whether they recognize Him or not . . . each and every one, in some way, feels God on those heights. Ancient people felt God's presence on high places too. Sadly, though they felt Him on peaks and high mou...

I wasn't planning to write today, but I am compelled to come out of my extended quiet spell long enough to share a heartfelt moment of brokenness and love . . . and hope. On this bright, glorious Sunday, I did not feel like going to church. I did not feel like offering words of worship or songs of praise. I did not feel like giving or smiling or hugging. Crying or stamping my feet? Maybe! Worship? Not so much. My emotions just would not line up with what I know . . . would not line up with the God I know! Old fears and new developments in our personal economy were warring against the quiet stillness of my trust in God, and it was a raging battle. I had to choose sides--one or the other would have me today and the choice was mine. What I know about God and His character was never shaken--I absolutely know and trust Him to be faithful and loving, kind and compassionate, powerful and present to an infinite degree. But my emotions!!! What loud, bossy, obnoxious things ...