Wonder as I Wander

Monday, November 30, 2015                                                          Numbers 17:1-11
Blake Brookshire

I grew up in the piney woods of East Texas. Pine trees are not showy. You won't find anyone staring at a pine tree remarking at its fall colors, spring blossoms or summer fruit. People tend to notice pine lumber or furniture though – you know, dead pine – maybe something not all that unlike the rod of Aaron in today's reading from Numbers 17.

When we moved to Nashville I noticed the trees here. I didn't mean to notice them; it was very accidental. During my daily commutes that first Fall I found myself swerving onto the shoulder through those hilly, tree-lined stretches of Highway 100. I simply had never seen anything like it before. There's a special wonder that comes from seeing something for the first time.

Last week, while walking from the parking lot of an average office building in Cool Springs, I passed an ornamental tree that stopped me in my tracks. There was something about it that didn’t fit, and after another moment it was obvious. White flowers. The tree was flowering (in the middle of Fall). Now I may have dozed off in life science and have grown up far away from deciduous forest, but powers of observation teach that trees bloom in Spring. What kind of misfit tree blooms during the first cold snap? I stared at the thing with that bewildered, scrunched-up-nose look for so long that I realized I was probably scaring someone nearby. Global warming, maybe? I laughed to myself and walked inside.

As it happened, at the end of that day I headed back to my car maybe 20 steps behind some Costa-sunglass-wearing fella who walked right into that same tree – well, a branch of it anyway – while distracted by his smartphone. His first reaction (after reseating his sunglasses) was to look around, after which he appeared understandably embarrassed to glance back and see that someone was witness to the whole folly. I said, "at least you had glasses on." He replied, "Yeah." Both of us now in matched stride, still strangers and far from our cars, I ventured, "Didn’t know trees could bloom in the Fall." He said, "yeah, I think it's one a them magnolia type that bloom this time a year." He was right (well, mostly).

Maybe an Autumn Cherry Tree (I looked it up) shattering what I formerly understood to be a basic law of nature is really nothing much to behold with wonder. Maybe it is.

The same God who authored creation was Israel's God and the God who commanded Aaron's piece of carved, dead wood – overnight – to begin sprouting, branching, budding, flowering and fruiting. That's something. We've all heard this story before, likely back in a time when with childlike naiveté we knew not how to be bothered by the scientific improbability of such a thing. But there is wonder, still, in that which adult experience brings no explanation.

The stories of the Nation of Israel, Christ's birth and our season of Advent are very real, but they are also mysterious. Medicine has no understanding of virgin birth any more than astronomy can account for a Star of David. But the gravity of the event that occurred at Christmas is remarkable. God with us. Sometimes all you can do is wonder.

Prayer: Spirit of the Living God, Author of Creation, the heavens are telling of your glory; fall afresh on me this Christmas. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Be Alert

Sunday, November 29, 2015                                         Luke 21:25-36

Guy Griffith

“Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” (Luke 21:36)

Our text from Luke reminds us that Advent is a season of active waiting. Of preparations not just of our homes but of our lives for the advent of Emmanuel. But in the deep darkness of the world, that Light is often hard to see and the wait seems long. A number of years ago on the first Sunday of Advent I was driving out of my neighborhood in Illinois meditating on the passage from Isaiah read that morning in church. It inspired these lines.

Illinois Advent

Willows still weep in November wind

Numbed green-gone-gold along a goose-gone pond

Waving loose-limbed goodbyes as Advent commences.

Waiting as deep darkness winds around

The houses and diminished fields once fond

Of tasseled corn.  What are the chances

That into this tear-stained, earth-toned

Flatness with stalk stubble and track homes bond

Built, the trees – even those behind the fences –

Will clap their hands to remind

Those whose souls are blacker still that yond

Morning Star, with night splitting light, advances?      GDG

As you go about your days, find ways in which you can “watch at all times” and be aware of the Light of Christ, the Morning Star, who advances on this dark world.

Prayer: Lord God, keep me alert and fill me with joy and light, no matter what my circumstances or that of the world might be. I pray in your Son's name, Amen.