Sunrises and Celebrations

I think I’m in love with the sound of fingers slipping in between guitar strums.

 

Maybe it’s because it feels a little messy and incredibly real, or maybe it’s because the few times I’ve ever picked up a guitar that was the only sound I could consistently get.

 

But I love it.

 

I love the soft crescendo of a song as it reaches its moment- that second where your soul just wants to explode and you can’t help but send your body out into the space before you, trying to recreate physically what may at best be described as a spiritually thin place, when heaven threatens to rip open the dividing curtain and flow onto the earth.

 

I can’t help but appreciate the beauty of the prodigal sun, who wandered off one day to follow a call no one understood, leaving nothing but rainy, grey skies in her wake. But today she came home, and as the sky lightened this morning she finally burst through the cloud cover, triumphantly exclaiming to any who cautiously ventured into the chilly fall morning,

“Here I am! Come and be refreshed, come taste and see the land that has been covered in shadows, come celebrate in the joy of the morning and the light of a new day!”

Celebrate.

That’s what I love- what I’ve been loving.

 

In the frenetic chaos of this season, it’s so easy to stare out the windows and only see the endless sheets of icy rain, day after day after day.

 

But that’s not what I see today- it’s not what I’ve been seeing.

 

Yes, my alarm clock rings at an obscenely early hour and I turn my lights off at the end of the day way later than I’d like. My phone never stops beeping and I can usually get half a sentence out before I’m interrupted by another thought. I don’t know when my last run was or my next one will be.

 

And into this barrage of demands, the sun is shining and my soul is learning peace.

There is great joy in this season, an infinite number of reasons to celebrate.

 

So I’m turning up the music, the guitar strings slipping just a little and the crescendos building in intensity.

I’m reflecting on all of the blessings the Lord has shamelessly given me: a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and overflowing has been poured onto my lap.

 

The time to mourn is over.

Come, let us dance.