wind blows deeply

Back several churches ago, if one can measure time in that way, someone challenged a group of us to look for the signposts that God places in our lives. I was reminded of that as I walked home from Bible study this evening.

One of the blessings of living a block and a half from a farmer's field is that the city lights do not manage to obliterate the stars above. The art and science of using the heavens for navigation is surely waning. However, as I managed to pick out Ursa minor and Cassiopeia and Orion (and as the frigid air nipped at my nose while searching for the Pleiades), it struck me that these too are signposts.

One autumn, as I sat beside a quiet lake while a gentle breeze with the hint of winter whispered through the grasses at the waters edge, my first signpost was set: hunger. From there I set out to learn what it meant to hunger for God, to yearn, to crave, to desire.

This lead quite unobtrusively into the second signpost: fasting. This is why I have Isaiah 58 posted on the sidebar and by my kitchen sink. (The kitchen sink because I do enjoy washing dishes by hand--the location is a good reminder.) True fasting shows itself in our attitudes and actions.

I will always show you where to go. I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—firm muscles, strong bones. You'll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry. You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You'll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.

Fasting took a long time for me to get. It took deserts and God removing the constants from my life; the things which I thought brought me stability only meant that I was desiring God less and trusting God less. My hope was not fully in Him. That was signpost number three.

The most recent signpost is that of taking a Sabbath. God has taught me to desire, to pursue, to set aside my worldly supports--now God is teaching me to entrust time to the One who is beyond time. I've said recently that my time is not my own; that my schedule is so chock full of meetings and to-do lists and engagements that I do not have time for me. I think that the first half of my statement is more true than I realize ... it is not my time to begin with but rather I have been entrusted with time in the same way I have been entrusted with material possessions. And I should not be surprized that there are guidelines for this thing called time; that in regular cyclical form I should be required to take a period of rest. It is a requirement, a commandment, one I do not regularly abide by.