Edgewater Grace

Fog, dense, heavy and gray.  Blanketing everything, obliterating sights and sounds.

People scurrying, looking for the pathway, turning on their headlights, trying to find their way.

Suddenly up ahead, a looming shape.  You drive by here daily, yet don’t remember what it is.  As you sweep by, you realize it’s a small copse of trees, trees that you see every day, but you suddenly reflect on the fact that you’ve never really seen them.  In the brightness and beauty of a stunning morning, the tiny copse blends into the environment, and you overlook it.

But, the fog brings them out with clarity.  And the smallness of it suddenly assumes the shape of a looming monster, bearing down on you as you approach from the south.

Fog does that to you.  It covers up the pathway.  It makes minutae seem paramount and you loose sight of your focus.

But, fog also makes you lose sight of the larger picture, and forces you to focus on the smallest particles of import – those tiny things we would have missed had it not been for the fog.

Our God is a god who lives in the clouds, masking who he is, but ever present in our lives.  He opens our eyes, or clouds them over, either to reveal significant awareness to our blind eyes.  The small child with the hurting eyes.  The old man who needs a friend to speak with, and ease his loneliness.  The widow weeping tears over a gravestone when no one else is watching.  The mother burying her child, killed in a drunken spree of random violence.  She never planned for it to happen this way.

Fog is annoying.  It gets in our way and slows us down.  It makes us pay attention.  And suddenly we see the looming monster within us that is sin.  We notice the minute matters so important to someone else.  And God creates within us the perfect response.  And the fog goes away.

It has served its purpose.  It has made us see.  With God’s eyes.  What we would have missed.  On our own.