sinking sands and solid rocks

The sunrise this morning was striking. As I lay in bed watching the first light slip over the rim of the earth, I saw a broad, dark band of cloud at the base of the sun rise. The dark cloud blocked any light shining through but could not contain the light spilling over the top. The light changed from a soft, pastel barely there pale gold to a strong, look at me bright yellow gold topped by the rising sun, a show stopper of brightness. Sunrises are so deceptive. They begin with a faint hint of light to come and seem to move with agonizing slowness. And yet, if you look away for a moment, there is a whole new light show in place. As the sun gets closer to the edge of my world, it moves so quickly. One minute it is not there and then it has risen. Day has begun.
Saturday was a sunrise day for me. Our church retreat, full of laughter and getting to know you’s, lifted my spirits. Hearing the story of Sylvester and the magic red pebble, finding red pebbles in our building and using them as magic introduction to people I thought I knew, a scavenger hunt in downtown Asheville, dancing, laughing, eating, talking about nothing in particular and everything in general... rays of warming light slipping over the dark edges in my life. I hated having to leave early for another community event because it felt so warm and funny and blessed to be with my church family. But leave we did and attended a fund raiser for the foundation that supports pastoral counselors in our region.
We went with our neighbors, the Roberts, and met another friend there. Again, laughter and food and connection... Jim and Gary kept winning. Gary got so embarrassed with his last win that he made me go up and get it for him. We told horse stories and saw mill stories and life stories. We have a date to get together again next Saturday to play some more. And then we came home to the message on the answering machine... Priscilla’s voice saying "Michael, please call me. I need you." Our hearts sank because we knew what that call meant. Hugh, our long time Presbyterian minister friend, had died.
My life, like yours, I suspect, is always a balancing act between the light and the dark... the joy of sunrise resting on the dark clouds of night... laughter with the memory of tears... and I am always caught off guard with the swiftness of the transitions. In this past month I have had the joy of my first horse and the grief of suicide in a close friend’s family, the sweet, beautiful, temporary, intense color of autumn leaves and the death of another friend after a long struggle with cancer, the choir and congregation and organ and drums and trumpet singing "The Church’s One Foundation" at the organ dedication service lifting my soul closer to God and Ardelle’s continued struggle to find joy and meaning in her life as she lives with blindness and dementia and digestive disease. I live standing on shifting sands, never able to settle, always having to live in the moment, grateful for the joy and the sadness, the gifts of life and death. The "ground of my being" in this world is God.
In my forties, I began to catch glimpses of my aging in my older friends. In my fifties those relationships became dearer to me as time began to fly past increasing the meaning of the present moment. Now in my sixties I find I have less need for being "nice" or proper and more need to be true to my self. If I am not as pleasant to be around as I used to be, I have learned the lesson of pleasing others at the expense of my own soul. I don’t have much time left to waste and the sense of my own ending in this world is a daily reminder of my final destination. So I haven’t changed the world in any significant way that will require a monument or holiday in my honor but I am still becoming... becoming more solidly anchored on the solid rock beneath the shifting sands... becoming more honestly loving... becoming a lover of the blazing sheer genius of creation in our world... becoming a child again as I travel home for the reunion with God that awaits me when my body dies... becoming the soul I was created to be.
My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
When darkness veils his lovely face, I rest on his unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil.
On Christ the Solid Rock I stand; All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.
As a Christian, Jesus is the clearest vision of God for me and the anchor that holds my soul in place when sinking sands pull me apart. I am grateful for the incarnated human ,Jesus, who carried the name Son of God, and who is a lively guide for me still as I search for the solid rocks in my life. Thanks be to God for the gift of Love in the face and form of Jesus.