Monday, November 13, 2017

Psalm 33:6

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,

   and all their host by the breath of his mouth. 

Breathe

I come to this space to see the deer … and breathe. The deer refuse their Sunday afternoon appointment with me this rainy day, so I breathe the air, fragrant with fallen leaves I shuffle through just as when I was a child.

Leaves delight, rust and red, gold and yellow, green ones that fell before the Artist could paint them. But they, too, contribute to the kaleidoscope of color rustling around my boots scuffling on the cinder path.

The earth is covered, coated complete with leaves that once hid the sun in this place even on brightest days. Today is pale gray, inspiring no rapture. The low sky stretches beyond bare limbs to the far horizon, telling me that I enter a future I cannot see or even imagine.

I will leave that future to the One who knows and loves me better than I can possibly understand.

Today, it is the leaves that awaken the heart. Millions of them … billions … blanket the ground, covering everything, their glory fading in the drear drizzle.

But their fate brings little sadness. Creation’s Author breathes out color and light and draws it back in again, only to breathe life into all that is from what has fallen.

I stand here, hoping the deer might join me, yet with every breath receiving the gift no mortal can make.

I am here … breathing. I belong, part of the breathing of God who invites me here … to know … and breathe.

So just breathe … and know.

Pr. David L. Miller