The wind has been blowing the snow across the highway today. Of course, the stuff is laying feet deep everywhere this time of year. But I thought it had packed down, crusted over. It’s been a couple days since our last snow fall and the sun is casting some warmth these days. Yet the tendrils of some gust or breeze seem to be able to scour up enough powder to entirely cover the road in places. A foreigner to northern Alberta could be forgiven for mistaking it as freshly fallen snow.
The action of the weather gives the illusion of something new. I find this analogous to the life of my soul. Some external circumstance of my life passes through me like a wind from an unknown quarter. It plows up some seemingly fresh experience–joy or love, anger or resentment–I had not realized were latent in me. I present it to the Lord: “See this new thing I have discovered.”
An amused smile flickers across the lips of my Maker. “No child, this is no new thing. But it is here now, so let’s face it together.” Together, we turn and look it full in the face. The condition of my soul does not seem so troubling when I know it rests secure in my Maker’s hands. It turns out I am a foreigner to my own heart and in need of a guide.
Yet He calls forth genuinely new things in my life:
“Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things;
his right hand and his holy arm, have worked salvation.”
Psalm 98:1
In this time of isolation, it is easy to keep offering up the same pile of wind-driven stuff to the Lord. Our anxieties, cares, emotions and thoughts might seem to be stuck on repeat. Let’s sing a new song. Open your windows. Go check the flower bed for the first signs of spring. Crack open that book that has been sitting on the shelf for years.
Too often, in the midst of hurry, we just want God to be on repeat. We show up at church hoping to meet God in exactly the same way we have on previous occasions. We want to hit an old high water mark; we want the snow to keep blowing up into the same drift.
Maybe today is the day you let God out of the ruts in your soul. Why not, on the edge of a pandemic, go some new place with your Savior? What is holding you back?
Lord, give me a melody and I will singit.
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