Last week’s blog ran away from me.
So, this week, I’m starting down the trail I began when another path opened up (ok, let’s call it what it really was – a rabbit trail…).
Where I began: With foghorn-blasts warning of misty days concealing the beauty of the Oregon shoreline, and the rugged potential dangers of craggy rock-lined harbors.
Where I got sidetracked: to me it seemed like that old foghorn blew every morning of every day and I spent my childhood growing up in cold-ghost-like-mist (of course, children are great observers, but terrible interpreters and I do keep that in mind).
As I mentioned, I found my attitude about those warnings shifting as I grew older from fear to resentment to comfortable familiarity.
It happens.
Over time, we drown out the familiar, because it becomes normal, common, “old hat.”
It’s as “comfortable as an old shoe.”
(the old foghorn, above, at the Bandon Harbor and the newer below)
So, I simply went about each day with a casual acceptance that coastal weather simply was what it was, never thinking that there were other places to live, where the days were warm/fog-less, and the skies were a robin’s egg blue, and the warmth of the sun kissed your skin.
In fact, rare it was that a thought of leaving my little beach town ever crossed my mind.
Until…
I had the privilege of being introduced to some of those other places….and, I never considered going back an option.
Often times I’ve explained to folks who’ve asked if I don’t miss living by the beach, “Yes, I love the ocean. Salt water runs in my veins; but, something happened when I moved where the sun shines more often than it doesn’t. In the sunshine, I felt like I came to life. I didn’t realize what I missed, because I just didn’t know.”
I just didn’t know…
And, so, I was comfortable living in the shrouded mist of foggy days.
A while back I picked up an old book, written by a gal who, along with her husband, served the Lord as a missionary in China back in the 1950’s.
In Isobel Kuhn’s book (By Searching), she recites a poem, instrumental in changing the course of her life, taking her from the “shrouded mist of foggy days” to another place where she basked in the abundant life in the SON (my words).
Here’s the poem, by John Oxenham, written late in the 19th century:
To every many there openeth
A way, and ways, and a way.
And the high soul climbs the high way,
And the low soul gropes the low,
And in between are the misty flats
Where the rest drift to and fro.
But to every man there openeth
A high way and a low –
And every man decideth the way his soul shall go.
“In between are the misty flats, where the rest drift to and fro…”
The misty flats.
Familiar.
Comfortable.
Status quo.
“Old hat…”
“As comfortable as an old shoe.”
But, there’s so much more!
Of course, I’ve transitioned to spiritually speaking.
The Lord has so much more for us on the High Way.
Hopefully, we’ve all avoided the low road that leads to destruction, but often times we’re content to dwell in those foggy flats.
Why? Because we just don’t know and the unknown is a bit scary!
What if I venture out of my comfortable little home-town, and life out there is hard?
But of this I am assured…
The High Way leads to abundant life; a life of adventure; a life where we journey with the Lord (the Lion of Judah) who is not so safe, but is always good!
No, the (physical) sun doesn’t always shine, even in sunshiny places…but, on the HIGH WAY, we are assured that we are always in the presence of the SON, who brings joy, no matter the circumstances.
His way (author, Mark Buchanan, calls it THE HOLY WILD) is a place:
“Where life is lived to the hilt. It’s the life where we walk day in and day out with the God who is surprising, dangerous, and mysterious. It’s a place of risky adventure where sometimes nothing makes sense, and yet is filled with glad surprises. It’s a place where we are called to live out a dangerous faith with an untamed God.”
OH! There’s SO! MUCH! MORE! When we walk the HIGH WAY with the WILD, UNTAMED GOD of the UNIVERSE and experience what it means to live in the SON, the adventure is limitless!
Life with Jesus is never dull…it’s full of joy and sorrow, easy and hard, peace and unrest, unity and conflict, friends and enemies, laughter and lament…
BUT…in all of that, we CAN see with clarity, color and beauty, when the SON shines bright and burns off the misty fog.
I never want to go back.
I came ALIVE IN THE SON and in HIS WORD!